Small-scale and independent water providers serve up to fifty percent of the population in urban centers in many of the developing and less developed countries. However, they remain largely unrecognized and unregulated. This article argues, based on the public interest theory and two case...

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) included a target to halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015--a right recognised as fundamental to human needs. Small independent water vendors are often the only water supply option in peri-urban...