Based on field investigations of initiatives to increase stakeholder participation in water management in Brazil and India, this paper provides insights into the practice of water sector reforms. Looking at the pace of reforms across both countries, the paper finds that the process of creating institutions to facilitate stakeholder participation is proceeding rapidly, but greater attention is required on administrative reforms and capacity building. The supply and demand of participation opportunities is often mismatched, and participation reforms in the water sector may follow two very different paths: the bureaucratic and the entrepreneurial.
This paper examines the question: how effective is a community driven development (CDD) approach to rural water supply? Using quantitative and qualitative data from a water supply and sanitation project in Punjab, Pakistan, the study finds that the CDD approach, consistent with expectations, had done well in extending water supply, drainage, and sanitation coverage to the poor rural communities, and demonstrated outcomes that are only achievable through CDD – including water tariff and cultural changes. The project was also effective in promoting local participation and ownership, particularly by women’s groups, and is therefore likely to have sustainable operation and maintenance (O & M). This study uncovers two dimensions of CDD in water and sanitation as means to an end: political reform, by proposing implementation strategies of decentralisation; and cultural reform, by providing the approach to break cultural barriers.
An Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (referred to as IDWA-I in this paper) was first proposed in 2007 for 23 member countries of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and formed part of the Asian Water and Development Outlook (AWDO), 2007 brought out by the ADB. IDWA-I was obtained by averaging 5 separate component indicators referring to capacity to buy water, extent of resource availability, amount of water used, water quality (indicated by a proxy variable, namely the death rate due to diarrhea) and the percent of people with access. This paper reports the main results of IDWA-I and IDWA-II, in which general access is replaced with specific access via home connection, after finding out the relatively weak correlation between the two types of access. Because of the dominating influence of the other common components, IDWA-I and IDWA-II are highly correlated indicators. The two, however, bring out diverse relative ranks of different countries.
This article provides an overview of the reform of water institutions in developing countries in the last three decades focusing on the what, why and how of institutional reform and outlines their implications for policy and research. The review covers four areas: 1) water rights and river basin institutions; 2) decentralized irrigation management; 3) private sector participation in urban water supply and 4) regulation of water infrastructure. The review suggests that 1) the theoretical rationale for reforms are mostly grounded on arguments for efficiency, effectiveness and fiscal sustainability with little considerations for equity; 2) models of institutional design varies from incremental to comprehensive; and 3) implementation experiences among countries are mixed given the conditional nature of institutional reform but changes in elite perception holds the key to reform.
The Failure of Water Utilities Privatization: Synthesis of Evidence, Analysis and Implications
During much of the 1990s, water utilities worldwide experienced a wave of privatization. The rationale for this is largely based on two hypotheses: the fiscal hypothesis and the efficiency hypothesis. This article examines the evidence and concludes that water utilities privatization has been a failure.
The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) is devoted to the rapid worldwide dissemination of social science research and is composed of a number of specialized research networks in each of the social sciences. The above papers were forwarded to the portal by Dr. K Seetharam, School of Public Policy, NUS Singapore.