Participants or customers in water governance? Community-public partnerships for peri-urban water supply

•We study value of Water User Associations (WUAs) on peri-urban water supply, Malawi.•WUAs can and improved potable water supply to poor peri-urban communities.•WUA/Public/NGO partnership boost local technical/managerial capacity, cost recovery.•Tradeoff: broader local autonomy, empowerment, participation, and ownership suffer.•Cost-recovery community urban water supply requires flexibility in CBNRM tenets. We examine the performance of water user associations (WUAs) and the role of actors, power relations, socio-institutional dynamics, and context in supplying water to poor urban and peri-urban neighborhoods of Malawi’s two major cities. Using a preliminary survey, key-informant interviews, focus groups, secondary data, and insights from the community-based natural resources management (CBNRM) literature and common-pool resources (CPR) theory, we argue that while a business-based WUA model can enhance water supply and access, the urban/peri-urban and historical context alters the nature of water and social actors and power relations involved, causing tradeoffs between water-supply and social goals of ownership, participation, and empowerment. The ensuing tradeoffs demonstrate that water supply to the urban/peri-urban landscape through community-based initiatives require flexibility in CBNRM expectations.