Memorandum submitted by the World Development
Group in Sheffield Water Group
1. SUMMARY
A cadre of consultants with skills and experience
in public and various forms of community development needs to
be recruited and supported in addition to the existing privatisation
consultants
2. The Group came into existence as a result
of the WDM campaign. We wished to study the issue in more depth
including the possible role of the private sector. Our recommendations
are the result of that study, debate and our cumulative experience.
We are:
The Rev'd Dr Michael Bayley, Anglican priest,
social scientist and former Lecturer on Community Work and Development
, Experience in Kenya and Tanzania.
Chris Malins, Solar Physicist at Sheffield University
Department of Applied Mathematics.
Carla Montemayor, former coordinator of the
Philippine Water Vigilance Network.
Dr Adrian Cashman, Research Fellow in Water
Management Institutions and Regulation, Sheffield University.
David Philipps, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy
at Sheffield University and author of Quality of Life: Concept,
Policy and Practice, Routledge.
Oliver Blensdorf, Retired Adult Education Co-ordinator,with
extensive experience in deprived parts of Sheffield, and Lecturer
in Environmental Studies and Local Studies at Sheffield College.
3. FACTUAL BASE
3.1 The context
3.1.1 The significant majority of global
water supply is undertaken on a public basis.
3.1.2 There are real problems in supply
efficiency, availability and capacity in many areas of the world,
and that these contribute to hardship and poverty and undermine
development, for instance towards the MDGs.
3.1.3 Privatisation has clearly failed to
be vindicated as a "cure-all" approach to water reform,
which suggests that other frameworks for water reform should be
investigated.
3.1.4 Several diverse examples of successful
reform in public utilities exist in the developing and developed
worlds.
3.1.5 Currently there seems to be no effective
or well supported mechanism to transfer skills and learning from
successful models of alternative reform.
3.1.6 The promotion of south south knowledge
transfer between public water schemes has the potential to deliver
excellent value for money, while keeping donor funds within the
water supply system.
3.2 Much of our data will be the same as
that produced by national WDM which we will not replicate.
3.3 This has been supplemented by the experience
of Ms Montemayor in Manila, Dr Cashman's involvement in the field
as an author of a recent OECD working paper on Water Futures and
Dr Bayley's work in the informal settlements in Nairobi and Nakuru
in Kenya and in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
3.4 We have also looked at literature from
the World Bank and the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development.
3.5 We should be clear, however, that our
main qualification for making this submission is simply that we
have thought hard and considered the evidence carefully over a
number of months and think that the one recommendation we are
making is critically important.
4. RECOMMENDATION
An agency is needed to provide consultancy not
just about privatisation, but also to develop a cadre of consultants
who could advise, on the basis of experience, on public-public
partnerships and a variety of other combinations such as co-operatives
and including the involvement of union, small scale locally owned
companies and South to South consultancy. Finance would also be
needed to support such an initiative.
Support is needed to facilitate the provision
of impartial advice and consultancy which does not necessarily
focus on privatisation or make assumptions about privatisation
being a desirable model. It is vital that a cadre of consultants
should be made available to developing country water projects
who could advise, on the basis of wide ranging experiences, on
publicly driven water reform. This should include the facilitation
of public-public partnerships as a mutually beneficial form of
consultation, and support and advice on the effective application
of other models for water reform such as the use of co-operatives
and including the involvement of unions, small scale locally owned
companies and local communities. Part of the effectiveness of
this new model of consultancy should be that it actively encourages
South to South consultancy in a way which has not previously been
common practice. Such consultancy could be made available through
the creation of an agency or its incorporation into existing administrative
structures. A commitment to guarantee finance in the medium to
long term would also be needed to support such an initiative and
make it successful.
October 2006
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