The term "rural water supply" covers all the measures taken to satisfy the demand for water in predominantly rural regions.

Rural regions of this kind may be typified by

- nomadic ways of life,
- peasant ways of life,
- peri-urban ways of life. ¹⁾

1) This does not include plantations and large-scale agricultural undertakings.

Rural water supply embraces the supply of drinking and household water to the rural population plus supply of the water required for purposes such as garden watering. However, though this constitutes an environmental problem in its own right, rural water supply also includes the watering of livestock plus the supply of water for livestock watering, because in rural areas it is virtually impossible in practice to draw any clear distinction between drinking water for humans and drinking water for livestock.

The supply of water for general agricultural purposes does not come within the scope of rural water supply; in particular, rural water supply does not cover systems for the irrigation of fields or rural hydraulic engineering works. In contrast to urban water supply systems, there is no piped distribution in the majority of rural water supply systems. Exceptions to this rule are the supply pipes and the (generally quite short) runs of pipe that in deprived areas form the rudimentary networks supplying public stand-pipe systems in spread-out villages.

Water demand must, inevitably, adjust itself to the supply that is present and usable. Where it is simply a matter of supplying the rural population, demand is generally between 15 and 30 l per person per day (l/p/d) and sometimes even less, and it seldom rises to levels of more than 60 l/p/d (only where there are house and yard connections). To cover the demand for water for livestock, an additional 15 l/d will be needed for each small animal unit and around 75 l/d for each large animal unit.

Depending on the nature of the abstraction, rural water supply can be divided into the following types:

- water supply from groundwater
- water supply from surface water based on

- use of surface waters and

- use of water furnished by precipitation.

To meet demand, use is often made of all three resources simultaneously, where seasonal water availability permits.

Unlike public, urban, water supply where use is made of a (large) central abstraction system and reservoirs and a connected distribution system, what is typical of rural water supply is so-called "de-centralised" water supply systems where the beneficiaries often assist in constructing the system under self-help projects and later on become responsible for operating it.

Relatively small groups of consumers ranging from a single family to village communities or nomadic herding communities obtain their water supplies from small, often scattered and sometimes widely separated individual abstraction systems with no distribution system, water carrying traditionally being the domain of women and girls in rural areas.

What is typical of de-centralised groundwater abstraction is dug or drilled wells or spring tappings. The lifting units in the systems are generally small, to match the number of consumers, the water resource and the generally limited constructional resources and their capacity is of the order of 1 m³/h in the case of village wells and up to 5 m³/h in the case of wells on pasture land.

Lifting is generally carried out by traditional means operated either by hand or by draught animals, though use may also be made of mechanical lifting aids such as hand-operated or motor-driven (generally diesel) pumps, bucket chains, etc. Artesian wells, in which the water is confined and rises to the surface without the need for lifting, are rare. In some cases water is lifted into community tanks, which are closed tanks of 2 - 6 m³ capacity fitted with a tap.

The characteristic feature of abstraction from surface waters is small impoundment works (normally earth dams). The hallmark of precipitation water use is cisterns (ranging from buckets through water barrels up to closed tanks made of concrete, sheet steel or plastic) and the associated intercepting and collecting surfaces (roofs, sealed upland slopes, etc.).

The predominant method of conveying water between the point of abstraction and the point of consumption is still transport in portable containers or by donkey, generally a job done by women and girls. Supply pipes are rare and generally very short. Transport considerations mean that drinking troughs for livestock are generally sited immediately adjacent to the abstraction or collecting point.

An important part in rural water supply projects is played by local measures to regulate the supply, particularly when the amount of water available is restricted. Such measures include for example restrictions on the daily periods of withdrawal and pumping and on the volumes lifted, and measures to control consumption such as suitable pricing.