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Contributions from
the Column
Facts and trends
World Bank responds to the Extractive Industries Review
German Development Budget 2005
BMZ: No money for Faisabad team
KfW banking group increases development loans
WHO withdraws recommendation for two generic AIDS drugs
“Village Phone” honoured
Strengthening small private water suppliers in the South
Stiglitz: “Doha is not a development round”
8-9/2004
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[ Multi-stakeholder dialogue ]
Strengthening small private water suppliers in the South
“Access to water is certainly a human right. I hope there is no more discussion about that. What we must care about now is how to realise it.” Belinda Calaguas of the British organisation WaterAid is a member of a working group which, in the next few weeks, will formulate a set of rules for a dialogue between water supply actors. Another member of the group is Ed Mitchell of the water utility RWE ThamesWater. For him too, he says, the human rights issue has long been settled – even though many NGOs may not believe him.
It was the row over the role of companies like RWE that prompted Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, at the Freshwater Conference in Bonn at the end of 2001, to propose the so-called multi-stakeholder dialogue. For a good two years, the group around Calaguas and Mitchell worked on a study designed to identify points of conflict and unsettled issues. Then, at a meeting in Berlin in late June, more than 60 representatives of development NGOs, state development agencies, private companies, governments and multilateral donors decided to start the dialogue.
“I was very sceptical at first because there were so many different interests”, says Marek Wallenfels, who represents the German technical cooperation organisation GTZ in the multi-stakeholder working group. But when the work got underway, scepticism waned. On one point, there is agreement already: the dialogue must not just end with another report containing general statements on the water supply problem; it has to make practical, case-specific proposals.
To achieve this, the participants agreed to a procedure based largely on national dialogues. These will identify solutions and an international dialogue group will collate the results. The working group’s study speaks of 20 national dialogues. Annette van Edig, who works on water at the German development ministry (BMZ), wants that number significantly reduced. “Otherwise there is a risk of biting off more than we can chew.” At the meeting in Berlin, the original question was also redrafted. The focus now is not only on the role of the private sector. Public utilities, too, will be scrutinised. How can they be made more efficient? How can corruption in the public sector be contained?
But private-sector participation remains a central issue. The biggest point of conflict, it seems, will be the question of whether and how much money legitimately can be earned from access to water. Opinion is particularly divided on the role of major multinational companies. Annette van Edig does not see big business as a problem: “They are already withdrawing from developing countries because the risks are too great.” However, Rudy Amenga-Etego of the Ghanaian Coalition Against the Privatisation of Water disagrees. He suspects the main purpose of the multi-stakeholder dialogue is to polish the image of the big private water suppliers and generate business for them.
What gets forgotten in this dispute are the many small private suppliers in developing countries who provide many of the poor with water, especially in urban centres. Elsa Mejia of the Philippine company Inpart Engineering complains that NGOs – especially in the North – rail against privatisation but make no distinction between the big corporations and small companies like hers. Yet it is the latter which often have the best solutions. Hence the need, according to BMZ official van Edig, for the dialogue to help small companies based in the South and strengthen communication between them. (ell)
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