Human health is greatly affected by inadequate access to sufficient and safe drinking water, especially in low and middle-income countries. Drinking water governance improvements may be one way to better drinking water quality. Over the past decade, many projects and international organizations have been dedicated to water governance; however, water governance in the drinking water sector is understudied and how to improve water governance remains unclear. We analyze drinking water governance challenges in three countries—Brazil, Ecuador, and Malawi—as perceived by government, service providers, and civil society organizations. A mixed methods approach was used: a clustering model was used for country selection and qualitative semi-structured interviews were used with direct observation in data collection. The clustering model integrated political, economic, social and environmental variables that impact water sector performance, to group countries. Brazil, Ecuador and Malawi were selected with the model so as to enhance the generalizability of the results. This comparative case study is important because similar challenges are identified in the drinking water sectors of each country; while, the countries represent diverse socio-economic and political contexts, and the selection process provides generalizability to our results. We find that access to safe water could be improved if certain water governance challenges were addressed: coordination and data sharing between ministries that deal with drinking water services; monitoring and enforcement of water quality laws; and sufficient technical capacity to improve administrative and technical management of water services at the local level. From an analysis of our field research, we also developed a conceptual framework that identifies policy levers that could be used to influence governance of drinking water quality on national and sub-national levels, and the relationships between these levers.

中文翻译：

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饮用水水质治理：巴西、厄瓜多尔和马拉维的比较案例研究

人类健康因无法获得充足和安全的饮用水而受到很大影响，尤其是在低收入和中等收入国家。改善饮用水治理可能是改善饮用水质量的一种方法。在过去十年中，许多项目和国际组织致力于水治理；然而，饮用水部门的水治理研究不足，如何改善水治理仍不清楚。我们分析了三个国家——巴西、厄瓜多尔和马拉维——政府、服务提供商和民间社会组织所面临的饮用水治理挑战。使用了混合方法：在国家选择中使用聚类模型，在数据收集中使用带有直接观察的定性半结构化访谈。聚类模型集成了政治、影响水部门绩效的经济、社会和环境变量，将国家分组。模型选择了巴西、厄瓜多尔和马拉维，以增强结果的普遍性。这个比较案例研究很重要，因为每个国家的饮用水部门都发现了类似的挑战；同时，这些国家代表着不同的社会经济和政治背景，选择过程为我们的结果提供了普遍性。我们发现，如果解决某些水治理挑战，就可以改善获得安全用水的机会：处理饮用水服务的部委之间的协调和数据共享；监测和执行水质法；和足够的技术能力，以改进地方一级供水服务的行政和技术管理。