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Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
Consumer participation matters
for public and private provision
Industrialisation requires
a solid foundation
Human rights for informal workers
Social standards as guiding principles
A neglected potential
5/2004 |
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[ Water utilities ]
Consumer participation matters
for public and private provision
According to Asit K. Biswas, 85 percent of drinking water provision worldwide lies in public hands. This situation was not likely to change much in the future, says the expert from the Third World Centre for Water Management in Mexico. Biswas therefore considers the conflict between the advocates and critics of privatisation of water utilities a waste of energy. At the third Development Policy Forum of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Berlin in late March, he described it as a “dialogue between the deaf.” Instead, discussion should focus on making public suppliers more efficient – with the help of the private sector companies, should they have something to offer.
Nevertheless, the debate went on in Berlin – and thanks to high profile participation, it did not turn out as a dialogue of the deaf. “Without participation of the private sector, the water systems in cities such as Lagos and Nairobi cannot be improved”, said Uschi Eid, the Parliamentary State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. She had shortly before been appointed by UN General Secretary Kofi Annan as a member of a new UN advisory board on water and sanitation. Cornelia Füllkrug-Weitzel, the director of Bread for the World, a protestant NGO, countered that private capital didn’t go to where it is most needed, because those places do not promise profits.
If, on the other hand, investors do take over water provision for a third world metropolis, they often turn out to be just as overburdened as public suppliers. Take Manila, for example, where two Philippine companies with French participation assumed the job in the mid 1990s. Almost ten years later, the poorest districts are still waiting for the connections they were promised, prices have risen by up to 700 percent, and one of the companies has gone bankrupt and is being kept alive with public funds. This was reported by Jude Esguerra of the Institute of Popular Democracy. Unfortunately, no example of successful private sector participation was presented in Berlin.
Rosmarie Bär from Swissaid supported the view that money from the private sector is not required at all. The amounts that would be necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of “water for all by 2015” were not that high. It was basically about setting political priorities correctly. There were conventions on the preservation of the climate and biodiversity as well as on combating desertification. Only water, “the source of all life”, did not enjoy any international protection, said Bär.
In 2002, the committee on monitoring the UN Convent on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights declared access to water a human right (General Comment No. 15). Piers Cross of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Programme said that it was no solution to declare water as a human right to be enforced by governments. Rather, it actually just meant business as usual. This approach was unlikely to change anything – least of all for the poorest people.
Whether financed by private or public money, whether a human right or not – without consumers’ participation, water supply does not work. The potential users must be asked what they actually need. They must be asked in which form, in their opinion, their demand can best be met and they must take a stake in the operation, maintenance and financing of the water supply. There are concepts on how this can be set up that are consistent with social welfare policies. (ell)
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