Around the world, conventional public providers of water are failing to serve the urban areas with an effective and safe supply. Providing water for one or two hours, sometimes every other day, does not ensure public health, let alone deliver the convenience that users desire and are often willing to pay for. Delivering an inadequate, subsidized service to the richer areas and allowing, by default, the informal private sector to charge the poorest between ten and twenty times as much by volume is not a satisfactory policy.
What should be the role of government in ensuring the safe provision of this basic need to the urban areas of developing countries, particularly to the poorest? Can the new approach of involving multi-national private operators deliver the necessary service at a reasonable and affordable cost? Based on their multi-country research, the authors consider whether governments can undertake their new role of economic regulation in the sector, while acting as a partner to the private sector in the provision of water supply, and consider how governments can develop the necessary capacity to ensure service to all.
Reform of the Urban Water Sector and the Role of Government
The Structure and Performance of Urban Water Utilities
Explanations of Performance and Reform Responses
Choosing Public Private Partnerships
The Challenge of the Concession Model
Addressing the Water Needs of the Urban Poor
Regulating and Enabling the Direct Providers
Taking Account of Capacity
Reforming Urban Water Sector Reform
ANDREW NICKSON is Reader in Public Management and Latin American Development, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, where he directs the Masters in Governance and Development Management programme of the International Development Department (IDD). He has extensive worldwide experience of teaching, research and consultancy on public administration reform, decentralisation, and regulation of privatised public utilities.
RICHARD FRANCEYS is Senior Lecturer in Water and Sanitation Management at Cranfield University and a member of 'WaterVoice Central', the Central Customer Services Committee of OFWAT, the UK water regulator. He has previously spent several years working with an NGO in Sudan.
Description
Around the world, conventional public providers of water are failing to serve the urban areas with an effective and safe supply. Providing water for one or two hours, sometimes every other day, does not ensure public health, let alone deliver the convenience that users desire and are often willing to pay for. Delivering an inadequate, subsidized service to the richer areas and allowing, by default, the informal private sector to charge the poorest between ten and twenty times as much by volume is not a satisfactory policy.
What should be the role of government in ensuring the safe provision of this basic need to the urban areas of developing countries, particularly to the poorest? Can the new approach of involving multi-national private operators deliver the necessary service at a reasonable and affordable cost? Based on their multi-country research, the authors consider whether governments can undertake their new role of economic regulation in the sector, while acting as a partner to the private sector in the provision of water supply, and consider how governments can develop the necessary capacity to ensure service to all.
Contents
Reform of the Urban Water Sector and the Role of Government
The Structure and Performance of Urban Water Utilities
Explanations of Performance and Reform Responses
Choosing Public Private Partnerships
The Challenge of the Concession Model
Addressing the Water Needs of the Urban Poor
Regulating and Enabling the Direct Providers
Taking Account of Capacity
Reforming Urban Water Sector Reform
Authors
ANDREW NICKSON is Reader in Public Management and Latin American Development, School of Public Policy, University of Birmingham, where he directs the Masters in Governance and Development Management programme of the International Development Department (IDD). He has extensive worldwide experience of teaching, research and consultancy on public administration reform, decentralisation, and regulation of privatised public utilities.
RICHARD FRANCEYS is Senior Lecturer in Water and Sanitation Management at Cranfield University and a member of 'WaterVoice Central', the Central Customer Services Committee of OFWAT, the UK water regulator. He has previously spent several years working with an NGO in Sudan.
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