Tanker water markets (TWM) supply water services in many urban areas, including those unconnected to public infrastructures. Notwithstanding, they have been associated with outcomes in conflict with sustainability goals of water policy, e.g., through inequitable and unaffordable supply or by contributing to groundwater overexploitation. So far, the literature dedicated to TWM has primarily conducted case studies embedded in diverse local contexts, which impedes the comparison and transfer of insights. In this article, we systematically summarize existing empirical knowledge on TWM and assess to what extent normative claims about the impacts of TWM on sustainability goals are supported by evidence. We use the concept of sustainable access, which combines notions of what constitutes access to water and what characterizes sustainable supply of services. The available evidence suggests that TWM have two key functions in urban water systems: (1) They provide services at otherwise unavailable levels, particularly with respect to the temporal availability and spatial accessibility of the service, and (2) they extend access to areas without or with low-quality network supply, typically low-income communities on the fringe of cities. From the perspective of sustainable access, we find that TWM can provide high service levels and thus fill a specific gap in the landscape of urban water services. Due to comparatively high prices, however, it is unlikely that these services are affordable for all. The combination of heterogeneous access to cheaper (subsidized) piped water and marginal pricing in TWM results in allocation outcomes that are not coherent with existing notions of equitable access to water. However, there is little convincing evidence that TWM necessarily result in unsustainable water use. The literature indicates that urban water governance in the studied areas is frequently characterized by a lack of effective institutions, which impedes the regulation or formalization of TWM.

Mathare as an informal settlement of the Global South which suffers from an inconsistent water supply and periods of scarcity, relies for its provision on water vendors. This dissertation strives to advance scholarly debates on understanding the production and governance of the ‘actual water supply’ beyond and in relation to the centralised piped water network, and to thinking the conditions for possible change to modes of water supply. An empirical investigation was conducted on certain temporalities of change and continuity in the relational practices of governance actors of the water provision, the water vendors, situated in the informal settlement of Mathare in Nairobi, Kenya. As such, experiences of water scarcity among the water vendors are suggested to contribute to shape Mathare’s water provision by motivating practices circulation, especially regarding water storage. The water vendors might also crucially sustain and re-configure rules, interact with, and be affected by artefacts involved in the water infrastructure through practices of maintenance, repair, but also decay through temporary events of water infrastructure disruption. In turn, looking at relations shaping the water governance, stable relations are suggested to be re-produced through ‘twilight’ actors and temporal modalities in the water infrastructure.

This thesis is about the tensions faced by communitarian water service providers in peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia, in their continued dependence on private water vending businesses, despite efforts to socialize service delivery. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cochabamba from May-July, 2013, this thesis argues that due in part to a lack of government intervention and regulation, many communitarian water associations in Cochabamba are being held captive by private water vendors who exploit the city’s unequal distribution of water resources for profit. It makes this argument by exploring two main points: that communitarian water associations leverage progressive forms of organization to improve service delivery, but are hindered by barriers which lie outside their control; and that small-scale water businesses are able to exploit the failures of the formal state/public and informal communitarian systems by positioning themselves as a necessary operation, in a way which limits the state’s ability to regulate their activities.