Person: van den Berg, Caroline
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Degrees
ORCID
Departments
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Biography
Publication Search Results
Performance of Water Utilities in Africa
2017-03, van den Berg, Caroline, Danilenko, Alexander
Africa’s urban population is growing rapidly. Between 2000 and 2015, the urban population increased by more than 80 percent from 206 million to 373 million people. Although access to piped water increased over the period (from 82 million urban dwellers with piped water in 2000 to 124 million in 2015), African utilities were not able to keep up with the rapid urbanization as reflected in the decline of piped water as a primary source of water supply in percentage terms. The objective of this assessment is to inform Bank and government policies and projects on the drivers of utility performance. The report describes the main outcomes and lessons learned from the assessment that identified and analyzed the main features of water utility performance in Africa. The report includes the following chapters: chapter one gives introduction, chapter two describes the methodology used in the study, including details on the data collection process. In chapter three, the study team undertook a trend analysis of utility performance of the sector. Chapter four examines the efficiency of utilities using a data envelopment analysis (DEA) while also using an absolute performance approach. Chapter five investigates the effect of institutional factors on utility performance. Chapter six presents an econometric analysis of the drivers of utility performance, using various definitions of utility performance. The results from the econometric models are triangulated with a set of case studies of five utilities (Burkina Faso’s l’Office National de l’Eau et de l’Assainissement (ONEA), Cote d’Ivoire’s la société de distribution d’eau de la Côte d’Ivoire (SODECI), Kenya’s Nairobi City Water and Sewerage Company (NCWSC), Senegal’s Sénégalaise des Eaux (SDE), and Uganda’s National Water and Sewerage Corporation (NWSC), similar to those that the electricity study team undertook, which are presented in chapter seven. The report concludes in chapter eight with the lessons learned from the assessment.
Investing in Water Infrastructure : Capital, Operations and Maintenance
2012-11, Rodriguez, Diego J., van den Berg, Caroline, McMahon, Amanda
This paper provides background information for development practitioners in the water and other infrastructure sectors. It outlines the major challenges related to financing the gap in global water infrastructure, including those systems that provide urban and rural water supply, and sanitation and irrigation services. Water infrastructure finance includes costs for capital works as well as the operations and maintenance costs that motivate sustainable service delivery. Section one introduces the linkages between water infrastructure and growing global challenges, including food and energy security as well as climate change. Section two describes investment needs in the sector and details various traditional funding sources. Section three proposes a five step reform cycle for making better use of limited funding in the sector. Tools for making these improvements are outlined in section four. The paper concludes with section five, a summary of the challenges and recommendations for the way forward.
Water Concessions : Who Wins, Who Loses, and What To Do About It
2000-10, van den Berg, Caroline
This note, based on the World Bank's Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) project database, reviews trends in infrastructure projects with private participation in low-income countries. Four main conclusions arise. Surprisingly, the proportion of countries with at least one project - eighty one percent - is higher among low-income, than middle-income countries. As in middle-income countries, most investment has been in telecommunications, or energy projects. However, in low-income countries, well over half the projects are greenfield. And the scale of private participation in low-income countries, lags far behind that in middle-income countries.
The Use of Willingness to Pay Experiments : Estimating Demand for Piped Water Connections in Sri Lanka
2006-01, Pattanayak, Subhrendu K., van den Berg, Caroline, Yang, Jui-Chen, Van Houtven, George
The authors show how willingness to pay surveys can be used to gauge household demand for improved network water and sanitation services. They do this by presenting a case-study from Sri Lanka, where they surveyed approximately 1,800 households in 2003. Using multivariate regression, they show that a complex combination of factors drives demand for service improvements. While poverty and costs are found to be key determinants of demand, the authors also find that location, self-provision, and perceptions matter as well, and that subsets of these factors matter differently for subsamples of the population. To evaluate the policy implications of the demand analysis, they use the model to estimate uptake rates of improved service under various scenarios-demand in subgroups, the institutional decision to rely on private sector provision, and various financial incentives targeted to the poor. The simulations show that in this particular environment in Sri Lanka, demand for piped water services is low, and that it is unlikely that under the present circumstances the goal of nearly universal piped water coverage is going to be achieved. Policy instruments, such as subsidization of connection fees, could be used to increase demand for piped water, but it is unclear whether the benefits of the use of such policies would outweigh the costs.
The IBNET Water Supply and Sanitation Performance Blue Book
2011, van den Berg, Caroline, Danilenko, Alexander
The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET) blue book creates a baseline and, at the same time, offers a global vision of the state of the sector in developing countries. By tracking progress in and quantifying and assessing the water supply and sanitation sectors, IBNET helps meet the goal of providing safe, sustainable, and affordable water and sanitation for all. This report serves three purposes. First, it aims to raise awareness of how IBNET can help utilities identify ways to improve urban water and wastewater services. Second, it provides an introduction to benchmarking and to IBNET's objectives, scope, focus, and some recent achievements. Third, it elaborates the methodology and data behind IBNET and presents an overview of IBNET results and country data. By providing comparative information on utilities' costs and performance, IBNET and this study can be used by a wide range of stakeholders, including: 1) utilities: to identify areas of improvement and set realistic targets; 2) governments: to monitor and adjust sector policies and programs; 3) regulators: to ensure that adequate incentives are provided for improved utility performance and that consumers obtain value services; 4) consumers and civil society: to express valid concerns; 5) international agencies and advisers: to perform an evaluation of utilities for lending purposes; and 6) private investors: to identify opportunities and viable markets for investments.
How "Natural" are Natural Monopolies in the Water Supply and Sewerage Sector? Case Studies from Developing and Transition Economies
2007-02, Nauges, Céline, van den Berg, Caroline
Using data from the International Benchmarking NETwork database, the authors estimate measures of density and scale economies in the water industry in four countries (Brazil, Colombia, Moldova, and Vietnam) that differ substantially in economic development, piped water and sewerage coverage, and characteristics of the utilities operating in the different countries. They find evidence of economies of scale in Colombia, Moldova, and Vietnam, implying the existence of a natural monopoly. In Brazil the authors cannot reject the 0 hypothesis of constant returns to scale. They also find evidence of economies of customer density in Moldova and Vietnam. The results of this study show that the cost structure of the water and wastewater sector varies significantly between countries and within countries, and over time, which has implications for how to regulate the sector.
Guidance Note : Public Expenditure Review from the Perspective of the Water and Sanitation Sector
2012-06, Manghee, Seema, van den Berg, Caroline
The objective of this guidance note: public expenditure review from the perspective of the water supply and sanitation sector is to provide World Bank staff with a body of knowledge and good practice guidelines to help them evaluate the allocation of public resources to water and sanitation services in a consistent manner and to increase their knowledge of public expenditure issues in the sector. This guidance note discusses the challenges that are specific to public expenditure management in water and sanitation and the difficulties often involved in identifying sector expenditures. The challenges particular to this sector stem from three factors. First, countries define water and sanitation differently (e.g., drainage may or may not be included, rural services may be considered separately). Second, responsibilities for water and sanitation policy are often divided horizontally across government ministries and agencies, vertically between national and local governments and functionally among the public, private, and non-governmental sectors. Third, the roles of these multiple actors may be unclear or overlapping.
The Drivers of Non-Revenue Water : How Effective are Non-Revenue Water Reduction Programs?
2014-08, van den Berg, Caroline
To many, reducing water losses is seen as key to more sustainable water management. The arguments to reduce water losses are compelling, but reducing water losses has turned out to be challenging. This paper applies a panel data analysis with fixed effects to determine the major drivers of non-revenue water, which is define as the volume of water losses per kilometer of network per day. The analysis uses data from the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities, covering utilities in 68 countries between 2006 and 2011. The analysis finds that non-revenue water is driven by many factors. Some of the most important drivers are beyond the control of the utility, such as population density per kilometer of network, the type of distribution network, and the length of the network, which are largely the result of urbanization and settlement patterns in the localities that the utility serves. The opportunity costs of water losses are also key in explaining what drives non-revenue water. The paper finds that very low opportunity costs of water losses have an adverse effect on the reduction of non-revenue water. Country fixed effects turn out to be important, meaning that the environment in which the utility operates has an important impact on non-revenue water levels. An important conclusion is that the design of non-revenue water reduction programs should study the main drivers of non-revenue water to provide utility managers with a better understanding of what can be achieved in terms of non-revenue water reduction and whether the benefits of these reductions exceed their costs.
The IBNET Water Supply and Sanitation Blue Book 2014 : The International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities Databook
2014-08-06, Macheve, Berta, Danilenko, Alexander, Moffitt, L. Joe, van den Berg, Caroline
Well-run water utilities play an important role in ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity. Consumers need reliable access to high quality and affordable water and sanitation services. To deliver these basic services efficiently and effectively requires high-performing utilities that are able to respond to urban growth, to connect with the poor, and to improve wastewater disposal practices. The IBNET Water Supply and Sanitation Blue Book 2014 summarizes the water sector status from 2006 to 2011. Since 2006, municipal water performance has improved despite accelerated urbanization and the impacts of triple crises (food, fuel, and financial). Overall coverage has increased and piped water and wastewater services became accessible to more people. An increasing number of utilities now actively handle the water billing, collection, and water management through metering. IBNET tools, such as data collection instruments and protocols, the IBNET database, and the IBNET tariff database, enable enhanced sharing of information on close to 4,500 utilities from more than 130 countries and territories.
Water Markets, Demand and Cost Recovery for Piped Water Supply Services : Evidence from Southwest Sri Lanka
2006-06, Nauges, Celine, van den Berg, Caroline
In many countries water supply is a service that is seriously underpriced, especially for residential consumers. This has led to a call for setting cost recovery policies to ensure that the tariffs charged for water supply cover the full cost of providing for the service. Yet, the question arises on how consumers will react to such price increases. The authors illustrate the impact of price increases on consumption of piped water through a study of the demand for water of piped and non-piped households using cross-sectional data from 1,800 households in Southwest Sri Lanka. The (marginal) price elasticity is estimated at -0.74 for households exclusively relying on piped water, and at -0.69 for households using piped water but supplementing their supply with other water sources, with no significant differences between income groups. Those households that depend on non-piped water sources have a time cost elasticity (as a proxy for price elasticity) of only -0.06. The authors discuss the implications of these results in terms of pricing policy.