Global Issue Paper No. 28
By Virginia Roaf, March 2006
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Background:
Water is a universal concern, touching everybody’s lives: in order to survive, access to water is essential. The quantity, quality, accessibility, affordability and sustainability of the sources of water that we use impacts on our well-being, our health and our social and economic status. Water is an issue which defines our cultures, our traditions and the structure of the societies that we live in. Despite the vital importance of these services, 1.1 billion people do not have access to safe water and 2.4 billion have no access to adequate sanitation. The approaches to water delivery that national governments, international financial institutions, NGOs and the people themselves are following are clearly failing in their efforts to ensure access to these services.
Water and sanitation services have been growing in importance, which can be seen in the increasing number of movements, conferences, organisations with a water focus, and the development of a right to water. The first World Water Forum was held in Marrakech in 1997, the fourth is to be held in Mexico in March 2006 – the debates at these forums have become more sophisticated, and more pressing, as the access to safe water continues to elude a significant percentage of the world’s population.
Because of the need for water to survive, people are prepared to pay a significant amount of their income and time to ensuring that they get enough to quench their thirst, cook their meals, and for personal hygiene. Expenditure on water will take precedence over many other needs. In times of scarcity, water, even unsafe water, will still be purchased, at prices far above what is ‘affordable’, and probably at the cost of other important expenditure, such food, health or education.
This somewhat special nature of water consumption, and to a lesser extent, sanitation provision, is part of what makes the delivery of these services both essential and an indicator of how effective, egalitarian and non-discriminatory the social and governance structures of a society are. The efficient delivery of water and sanitation is essential for economic productivity and the health of a nation’s workforce. Where water services are managed equitably and successfully, this is an indicator of good governance practices, that some attempt is being made towards equality of distribution, at least the protection of those who have least.
Water is both an economic good, which people will pay significant amounts for domestic and economic reasons, and a social good, which cannot be replaced by any other good. It is this dichotomy that has frequently led to problems in defining how water services should be managed when considering delivery approaches and options, and which has led to disagreements as to whether water should be sold only as a commodity, priced according to demand, availability and the real cost of delivery or priced according to need and ability to pay.
A further recent development is the acceptance of the right to water, recognised by the UN Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights in General Comment No.14, which has ensured that the rights-based approach to development is discussed within the water sector. While there are misplaced fears that this right to water implies that water must be available for free, the real benefit of the right to water is that its recognition puts delivery of water to all as a monitorable responsibility of all States party to the convention of human rights.
The debates on the commodification of water have been compounded by the question of how water services should be managed, whether they should be publicly or privately managed (and in a few cases, whether the infrastructure should be privately owned). The focus of the discussion has been on issues of equity, and the moral or ethical reasons for holding water and sanitation in public hands and whether there are in fact good reasons for allowing services to be privately managed for reasons of efficiency and equity. Of late, the debate has been somewhat reduced, due to the lack of private sector interest in water and sanitation services in developing countries, leaving the core issue of improved access to the poor in sharper relief. When considering access to services for the poor, it has been found that it is largely irrelevant who manages the services, as urban water utilities are not generally reaching the most vulnerable and marginalised groups. The majority of sector reform are still failing to address this crucial issue, whether public or private management or ownership is advocated.
Due to the above debates, and high-profile failures of private sector participation in water services in the last few years in the cities of developing countries (notably in the Philippines, Brazil, Argentina, and recently Tanzania), the International Finance Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank have started rethinking their strategies of support for water services. The World Bank is at least nominally reducing conditions for taking loans for water sector support, which previously demanded private sector participation.
The changes in IFI strategy also have to be seen in the context of an increased focus on poverty alleviation in general and access to safe water and sanitation services in particular. This is due to the setting of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and also an increased emphasis on good governance and decentralisation processes. While these issues will not be debated in depth in this paper, they are an important aspect of changes in direction of development policies.
This paper considers World Bank policies and projects in urban areas of developing countries to see what the impact of these developments have had on World Bank theory and practice, and whether the World Bank is succeeding in contributing to poverty alleviation in its water and sanitation projects.