INSTITUT Veolia Environnement

  • Home
  • Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development

Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development

  • Table of contents
    • Partnerships between BOTH THE public and THE private sector, A KEY ISSUE FOR DEVELOPMENT
      • Innovation and Accountability: balancing the structures with the purpose of partnerships in the water and sanitation sector - Ken CAPLAN

Innovation and Accountability: balancing the structures with the purpose of partnerships in the water and sanitation sector - Ken CAPLAN

The provision of water supply and sanitation services in poor communities is a complex challenge. Successful approaches incorporating a clear understanding of social, technical and economic dimensions. This requires close links between social development specialists, engineers and economists or financial analysts...

In a number of places Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been introduced in an effort to achieve greater efficiencies, promote greater innovation, and create a more consumer-driven approach to the provision of water supply services.'PPPs' take a number of different forms employing a range of different types of private sector entities. More straightforward service contracts involve a company assuming a specific aspect of the service (leakage control, for example). Concession contracts involve a company taking over full responsibility for operations, maintenance, and investment (including expansion).

The overarching goals for PPPs are three-fold: 1) to improve operating performance and effectiveness; 2) to depoliticise policy making and enforcement; and 3) to depoliticise the approach to, and potentially leverage in different forms of, investment. For services in poor communities, each of these three goals needs to be viewed through a technical, social and economic lens. For example, to improve operating performance and effectiveness, contracts need to be written in such a way that incentives exist for companies to explore what kinds of services poor households want. Sufficient flexibility should be available to experiment around different approaches to technology, customer relations, and the use of subsidies, for example. Ways need to be found to mitigate against the financial and political risks to the companies that generally drive up contract costs. Finally, the greatest challenge is around the capacity of the public sector to establish appropriate policies and support suitable approaches to meet the needs of the poor. Though public-private contracts have been in operation in many places for decades, access to information, legal skills, and technical competencies still create power imbalances that make these contracts challenging.

Within this context of PPPs, multi-sector partnerships between the public, private and civil society sectors may be part of the solution. By incorporating a more formalised social, civil society angle, such partnerships are expected to create more sustainable delivery. They can enhance approaches by encouraging innovation around process (e.g., consumer voice) and delivery (e.g., collection mechanisms). If water and sanitation partnerships are to deliver what is expected of them at the local level, however, they must introduce accountability mechanisms that do not overshadow their ability to innovate. Balancing innovation and accountability is critical if multi-sector partnerships are not to become a mechanism of the past, leaving us no further in getting services to those that need them than we were before.