Water P-Notes

51 items available

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These practitioner notes (P-Notes) are published by the Water Sector Board of the Sustainable Development Network of the World Bank Group. P-Notes are a synopsis of larger World Bank documents in the water sector.

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Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
  • Publication
    Template for Assessing the Governance of Public Water Supply and Sanitation Service Providers : A Tool for Understanding Water System Effectiveness
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-04) Locussol, Alain; Ginneken, Meike van
    The template is a tool to assess the performance of an urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) service provide by taking into account the governance, policy, and management context it operates in. The template complements extensive work done on comprehensive performance indicators through the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IB-NET). These metric indicators measure service coverage, efficiency, reliability, financial sustainability, environmental sustainability, and affordability to provide reliable data about the quality of WSS service and the performance of WSS service providers.
  • Publication
    Using a Private Operator to Establish a Corporatized Public Water Utility : The Management Contract for Johannesburg Water
    (Washington, DC, 2010-04) World Bank
    In post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa, the city water authority had fallen into disarray (a common situation with urban services). In 2001, a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) emerged as a way to bring new expertise and efficiency to the delivery of public utility services, where a five-year management contract successfully restored services, built local capacity, and helped put Johannesburg Water on a solid footing. The management contract for water supply and sanitation services in Johannesburg, South Africa presents an entirely different perspective. The municipal government implemented the PPP as an interim measure, part of a program specifically designed to improve the efficiency of municipal public services. While an experienced international operator was brought in, the aim of the PPP was not to transfer management to a private concessionaire for the long run. Instead, the goal was to establish a viable, corporatized public water utility by leveraging the expertise of an experienced private operator for a number of years.
  • Publication
    Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Water Utilities : A Review of Experiences in Developing Countries
    (Washington, DC, 2010-04) World Bank
    Since 1990, many national and local governments in developing countries have contracted with private companies to operate or manage their water utilities under Public-Private Partnership (PPP) contracts. The assumption was that the private sector will improve utilities by bringing in new capital, raising the level of staff expertise, and making operations more cost-effective and efficient. More than 260 PPP contracts have been signed to provide water services in more than forty developing countries. The recourse to private operators has been accompanied, however, by a good deal of controversy. Several high profile contracts, such as in Buenos Aires, were cancelled in recent years following conflicts between the public and private partners. This has raised doubts about the suitability of PPPs to help improve water services in developing countries. Yet, there has been only little objective data available in the literature about the performance of PPPs, and the resulting debate has been based more on ideology than fact. This study attempts to redress the shortage of information by examining, through objective indicators, the actual performance of PPPs in developing countries over the last fifteen years. It collected data from as many as 65 PPP projects, representing a served population of about one hundred million people half of the urban population served at one point in time since 1990 by private water operators, and 80 percent of the population served by a private operator for more than 3 years and under a contract signed before 2003.
  • Publication
    Guiding Principles for Successful Reforms of Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Sectors
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-04) Locussol, Alain R.; Fall, Matar
    The note proposes a methodology for assessing the accountability framework of an urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) sector that it defines as the set of actors, mandates, contractual arrangements between actors, and instruments used by actors to implement their mandates. The accountability framework focuses on the five key functions of the urban WSS sector that are policy formulation, asset management and infrastructure development, service provision, financing, and regulation of the service. The note recommends that particular attention be paid to incentives, either productive or counterproductive, that could influence the performance of the WSS service. It also suggests identifying vested interests likely to be affected by reforms, with a focus on those engaged in fraud and corruption, as they could actively lobby against reforms which, if successfully implemented, would affect their revenues. The note focuses primarily on the provision of official piped WSS service, but it also recognizes that when a central service provides limited coverage or poor performance it can forfeit its monopoly status, whereupon alternatives to the piped WSS service often play an important role. The note also stresses the need for identifying weak links of the accountability framework as they could encourage fraud or corruption. The note finally summarizes best practice for setting WSS tariff levels and structures and for designing subsidies that reach those who need them.
  • Publication
    Key Topics in Public Water Utility Reform
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-01) Ginneken, Meike van; Kingdom, Bill
    Urban water supply services have traditionally been provided by state-owned, water utilities. In the past decades, many governments have tried to turn state-owned water utilities into effective and viable organizations with mixed success. Why have some public utilities become more efficient service providers, while others have not been able to break the vicious cycle of low performance and low cost recovery? The World Bank report "key topics in public water utility reform" presents a framework of attributes of well functioning utilities and how they have introduced key institutional measures. It thus aims to help water and sanitation sector practitioners to choose and apply public utility reform approaches.
  • Publication
    Engaging Local Private Operators in Water Supply and Sanitation Services
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) Triche, Thelma; Requeno, Sixto; Kariuki, Mukami
    Programs to reform urban utilities and to engage the private sector have tended to focus on large cities and on transactions with large foreign private operators. This is changing, as smaller towns and cities are growing rapidly in many developing countries. Concurrently, decentralization is shifting responsibility for services from national to smaller entities that often cannot finance and manage them effectively. Paralleling this trend, new service models in which local private firms contract with local governments or community associations to provide water supply and sanitation (WSS) services have been proposed in smaller urban contexts. The author examined how these challenges are being addressed in eight World Bank projects in Cambodia, Colombia, Paraguay, the Philippines, and Uganda. In all five countries, the government has sought public-private partnerships to promote sustainability, increase access to services (particularly for the poor), and, except in Cambodia, strengthen the role of local government. All five countries have policies that encourage greater access to services by the poor, to the extent consistent with the paramount goal of financial viability. Investment subsidies, particularly those targeting the poor, have played an important role in all cases.
  • Publication
    Economic Regulation of Urban Water and Sanitation Services
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) Ehrhardt, David; Groom, Eric; Halpern, Jonathan; O'Connor, Seini
    The design of regulation for water supply and sanitation (WSS) services has tended to follow a check-box approach - diagnose the need, prescribe an independent regulator or similar model (often developed in a different sector or country), and hope for the best. This approach has not always worked well. Regulation cannot solve all the problems that confront WSS services, and imported models may not work locally. Regulation must be based on a clear understanding of its capabilities and limits. Its design must reflect not only key principles of regulation, but also local needs, local legal instruments, and local organizations. Economic regulation addresses the problems posed by natural monopolies by compelling service providers to keep costs down, charge fair prices, and provide good service. An effective system also designates an entity to implement and enforce the regulations. Together, these functions remain limited in scope. To complement and reinforce economic regulation, a supportive policy environment and good governance of service providers are required. In short, economic regulation should be designed in tandem with other reform efforts.