Water services and the private sector in developing countries : comparative perceptions and discussion dynamics (original) (raw)
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It has been estimated that by 2025 1.8 billion people will inhabit regions suffering from water scarcity, and will not have enough clean water for consumption and food production. This, however, is not necessarily a consequence of a physical lack of water. It has been highlighted repeatedly, that the real cause of water scarcity is an economic lack of it, meaning that water scarcity occurs through mismanagement. Faulty water management structures can often be traced back to the political forces that are responsible for them, such as incompetent or corrupt governments. There have been repeated attempts to solve the persistent problems of a lack in efficiency and equality in water access by commercializing the utility and privatizing it. Both public and private management structures have their advantages and drawbacks, but when considering how a depoliticized water supply system could be established, privatization is the only option. The possible ways in which privatization can take place and how political forces can be kept to a minimum are examined here. The conclusion the evidence leads to is that political influences are inextricably present, and that this need not necessarily be undesirable. The success of water supply systems is not so much dependent upon whether the structure is public or private, political or depoliticized, but rather on the nature of the governance of it.
Water politics and management: findings from Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America
2017
Presentation of the Thematic Area and the Working Paper This Working Paper is part of the activities of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network's Thematic Area 3 (TA3), the Urban Water Cycle and Essential Public Services (http:// waterlat.org/thematic-areas/ta3/). TA3 brings together academics, students, professionals working in the public sector, practitioners from Non-Governmental Organizations, activists and members of civil society groups, and representatives of communities and users of public services, among others. The remit of this TA is broad, as the name suggests, but it has a strong focus on the political ecology of urban water, with emphasis on the politics of essential water services. Key issues addressed within this framework have been the neoliberalization of water services, social struggles against privatization and mercantilization of these services, the politics of public policy and management in the sector, water inequality and injustice in urban areas, and the contradictions and conflicts surrounding the status of water and water services as a public good, as a common good, as a commodity, as a citizenship right, and more recently, as a human right. This Working Paper includes six contributions. The first article, by Mark Drakeford, presents a historical analysis of the changing arrangements for the provision of essential water and sanitation services in Wales. This, previously unpublished paper, was originally presented at a special seminar organized in the University of Oxford in 2002 as part of the activities of the PRINWASS Project (http://waterlat.org/projects/ prinwass/). Drakeford offers a critical assessment of the implications and impacts of the privatization of the Welsh Water Authority by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989, and discusses the process of partial de-privatization that took place in the year 2000. The article provides important insights about the negative impacts of privatization, particularly on the poorer sectors of the population. This is of the highest relevance, given the renewed push towards the privatization of water utilities that is taking place, for example in Latin America (notably in Brazil and Mexico) as we write this Introduction. The second article, by Ross Beveridge, discusses the troubled process that characterized the privatization of Berlin's Water Company (BWB) in 1999, in the aftermath of the reunification of Germany. Beveridge shows how the privatization process was the result of political decisions largely unrelated with the situation of water and sanitation services, and rather determined by a broader political project seeking to make Berlin once again a powerful player in Europe. The article delves into some of the intricacies of the privatization process, characterized by top down decisions, lack of transparency, and secretive negotiations between politicians and multinational water companies. Beveridge's paper presents important lessons that can be derived from Berlin's troubled experience with water privatization, which eventually led to the remunicipalization of water and sanitation services in 2011-2013.
2017
This issue of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network Working Papers includes six contributions. The first article, by Mark Drakeford, presents a historical analysis of the changing arrangements for the provision of essential water and sanitation services in Wales. The second article, by Ross Beveridge, discusses the troubled process that characterized the privatization of Berlin’s Water Company (BWB) in 1999, in the aftermath of the reunification of Germany. In the third article, Emmanuel Akpabio, Eti-ido Udofia, and Kaoru Takara discuss some aspects of the interrelations between people and water in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. The fourth article, by Melina Tobias, Damiano Tagliavini, and Melisa Orta, addresses the current global wave of re-publicization of formerly privatized water and sanitation companies, looking at the experiences of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe in Argentina. In the fifth article, Barbara Casciarri and Mauro Van Aken discuss the significance and potentiality of "water" as an anthropological object of study. They place emphasis on the the fact that, despite water's key role in social and cultural relations, it has been mainly studied by the natural sciences, while anthropology has failed so far to recognize the value of water as an object of study. They suggest newly emerging perspectives for research on the subject. This article was originally published in French as an Introduction to an special issue on the anthropology of water in the Journal des Antropologues. The article by Casciarri and Van Aken was translated by Luisa Arango and Jorge Rowlands, who also provide and introduction to meta-studies of water-related research carried out by French and British anthropologists. The sixth and final article, by Ladislau Dowbor and Arlindo Esteves Rodrigues, focuses on the contradictions characterizing the conceptualization of water by different social actors, in particular the contradictions between market-driven notions of water as a commodity and civil-society understandings of water as a common good. The six articles composing this edition, from authors based in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, provide important contributions to current debates about the politics of essential water-related services. They also offer important insights about new avenues for research on water issues, aiming to enhance our knowledge of both empirical experiences and academic traditions that often remain isolated from each other whether because of geographical, national or cultural obstacles and distances.
RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES OF THE WORKSHOP By Shubhagato Dasgupta, Rémi de Bercegol, Odile Henry, Brian O’Neill, Franck Poupeau, Audrey Richard-Ferroudji & Marie-Hélène Zérah Scientific Issues During the 20th century, water distribution and treatment services (as well as gas, electricity, transportation and telecommunications services) emerged as a socio-technical system, vital for people living in towns and large metropolises. Deeply embedded in the materiality of social life and the environment, the system is closely linked to a physical geography (a hydric resource, pluviometry, terrain, ecosystem) that gives rise to economic factors (fixed assets) and legal institutions (norms, laws, contracts); it also corresponds to an institutional system that manages this resource in a specific territory occupied by social groups, with their conflicting interests; it requires specific skills in terms of administration and engineering and most of the time these are defined by the administrative services responsible for the management and construction of water infrastructures. There is hence no doubt that water management constitutes an area of expertise in its own right, an area of study and specific action that tends to blur the distinctions between science, action and expertise. A study of the water sector in fact engenders a vast field of applied research, where public teaching institutions, research and development services within private enterprise, as well as management consultancy companies specializing in natural resources meet, exchange ideas, best practices and evaluation techniques – which all contribute to creating a consensus that impacts the choices of political decision makers. It is within the context of this doxa that the uniform and universal model of distribution and treatment of urban potable water was imposed. This model is often presented as the best, or even the only distribution model capable of implementing the objective of “water for everyone” in terms of quality as well as equal access; it is seen as a model capable of providing a homogenous service to every consumer. Within this “supply network” model, which is supposed to constitute a catalyst for spatial integration, we can identify several fundamental characteristics: an operator is associated with a territory, it presupposes the existence of a system of interconnected equipment and implies centralized and planned management. While from the 1990’s onwards the water domain experienced the controversies and social struggles against “privatization” of water services or critics of the hydro-bureaucracy and hydraulic mission, now the pivotal problem that water and research on this subject have to face seems to be: what is the relevance of this model that favors a constant extension of universal services? In many places projects have been challenged on the basis of their economic, social or environmental impacts. Water engineers have been challenged internally and externally. In the urban areas, the shift in focus was also largely induced by the current trend towards increasing urban sprawl and the growing scarcity of natural resources. Some of the other factors responsible for the questioning of the accepted model are: on the one hand, the model’s failure to provide a universal service, and particularly its incapacity to overcome the obstacles to creating an infrastructure in peri-urban and rural areas; on the other hand, the problem of “water stress” prevalent in certain regions like the West of the United States, the high plateaus in the Andes, the Brazilian sertão, North Africa, the Arab peninsula, certain regions in India, Central Asia or Northern China. It in fact seems to be difficult to create a single, homogenous network in territories that are increasingly spread out and densely populated, particularly given the evolution of the equation between the availability of resources and the demand for services. Hence some voices are contesting this doxa and putting forward proposals for alternative or hybrid models: these are essentially based on a technical and administrative decentralization of services, a greater symbiosis between the socio-technical systems (treatment and energy production, for example) and the creation of a multiplicity of institutions to replace a monopolistic organization. The main hypothesis of this workshop is that it is impossible to understand water policies without looking at those who implement policies and contribute to produce the doxa on water and its uniform model, especially the engineers that contribute to define their knowledge and practices as state capacities. The definition of skills and professional practices in these administrative services affect not only the types of infrastructures built for transporting water, but also the implementation of administrative practices within the services: contracts, areas in which the operators intervene, infrastructure maintenance, price fixing, etc. The focus would hence be on States’ corps of engineers as varied as the Army Corps of Engineers in the United States, the Corps of Bridges, Waters and Forests (Corps des Ponts, des Eaux et Forêts) in France, or as the Public Works Department/Water Board, in a number of States in India, who from the 19th century onwards, established models for technical systems that served to carry water to towns that wanted to “modernize”. The case of the United Kingdom reveals another configuration, which has less to do with State expertise and where engineers have a different type of influence. As for the case of India, it exhibits a colonial model marked by relatively early intervention by the colonial powers, whose first large scale municipal works projects began with the water supply. While the works were managed largely by engineers employed by the administration, the private sector – essentially British companies - was involved to quite a large extent, through a system of contracts. The colonial authorities’ control over the water supply system did not totally exclude indigenous initiatives, which sometimes valorized the use of non-British technology. Finally, China and Brazil present configurations which are essential to an understanding of the new management styles, given the importance on the one hand of mega-projects, implemented through hydric policies adapted to the respective phenomena of urban growth, and on the other hand, given the role these countries have played in the invention of alternative management models, better adapted to the diversity of local partnerships.
NEW APPROACH TO PRIVATE SECTOR PARTICIPATION IN THE WATER SECTOR OF AFRICA'S DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
2005
This research has established a Best Practice for Private Sector Participation in Water Supply Development for Africa’s developing countries, identifying problems, constraints, risks, and suggesting a form of Public Private Partnership, which will address, the problems identified. forms of Public Private Partnership have been studied. Stakeholders problems have been broken down into categories corresponding to the characteristics of Public Private Partnership. In African developing countries where the majority of its population are poor, the current approach to private participation in water sector can unavoidably erect barriers to improving service for low-income households in developing countries. The approach frequently involves exclusive control of a local monopoly over a long period and an obligation to provide service to all or to all who request it within the area of exclusivity A new approach to private participation in development of water infrastructure pro-poor requires rethinking the design of both water sector transactions and supporting regulation, especially when output standards can encourage innovation in inputs, they discourage more significant innovation by continuing to use existing forms of service. The research highlights proposes a new model for the development of water supply schemes as well as management of existing water schemes, The Structure of the management model are derived along with the participants roles and risks portfolio is analysed. The Model produced results are in agreement with logical solutions
2018
Presentation of the Working Paper We are glad to present another issue of the PRINWASS Project Series (SPIPRW). The SPIPRW Series has the objective of making available edited materials based on the final reports of the PRINWASS Project (www.prinwass.org). This project was carried out between 2001 and 2004 and was funded by the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme. PRINWASS is a major landmark for our Network, as WATERLAT-GOBACIT was created by a group of PRINWASS partners after the project ended to continue working together on the politics of water and water services. Although some time has passed since the project ended, the topics addressed, and the project's findings have significant relevance and can contribute towards better understanding some of the challenges currently facing the implementation of progressive, egalitarian water politics. In short, PRINWASS' main objective was to examine critically the policies of privatization of water and sanitation services implemented worldwide during the 1990s, looking at specific cases from Africa, Europe and Latin America. The project carried out case studies in Argentina,
This essay explores an institutional conceptual framework to identify the main drivers for private investments in water and sanitation infrastructure. Particular attention is paid to the interaction of players (consumers, providers, governments, financiers and development agencies) and institutional arrangements (type of organizations, management models and regulations) chosen by societies to determine sustainable social outcomes, that is, the efficient and effective delivery of water and sanitation services. From that perspective, this essay argues that governance is the key factor that guarantees financial sustainability of providers which is the main driver for private investors who search long-term returns rather than short-term windfalls. In the end, this essay argues that no matter what type of model societies choose to deliver water and sanitation services, all type of organizations search for operative efficiency and effective delivery of water, a common goal that governs long-term financial sustainability.