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Nai r obi , 2008
Review of existing concepts of water governance and an analysis of pro-poor approaches in UN-HABITAT
Copyright © United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2008
Te designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the ex-
pression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the
legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its
frontiers of boundaries. Excerpts may be reproduced without authorization, on condition that the source
is indicated.
Author : Rose Osinde
Editors : James Ohayo and Noordin Tierry
Design and Layout : Sarah Oiro
Sponsors : Urban Governance Branch
Printer : United Nations Office in Nairobi Print Shop
3 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................................4
1.0. Introduction :
Rationale and Significance of Pro-poor Urban Water and Sanitation ordinances...........................5
1.1. Why Pro-poor Urban water and sanitation Governance?...................................................................7
2.0. Understanding Governance:
General Concepts & Definintions of Water Governance..................................................................15
3.0. Regional urban water and sanitation: Challenges and dynamics
Current Practices in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean...............................................25
4.0. An inventory of UN-HABITAT prejects/Programmes:
Focus on developing a pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance framework.......................32
5.0. Approaches & activities of other by donors and development agencies ............................................51
6.0. Emerging typologies and guiding principles for developing a pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance framework..............................................................................................................................61
7.0. Proposed Framework & Possible tools:
(See the proposed framework for promoting pro-poor water and sanitation governance in urban programmes
and projects - Part II – separate document)...............................................................................................68
8.0. Conclusions and Recommendations .........................................................................................................69
4 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Executive Summary
Trough its mandates, global programmes and
country interventions, UN-HABITAT recognises
lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate
sanitation as one of the greatest humanitarian, social
and developmental challenges affecting the most
vulnerable group in the world– the poor.
Te purpose of this extensive review (Part I) is to
provide the basis for defining a pro-poor water and
sanitation governance framework and the tools
required to improve UN-HABITAT efforts in favour
of adequate water supply and sanitation services for
the urban poor. Accordingly, Part I provides an
understanding of the needs and approaches and
identifies the strategic parameters for governance in
the delivery of water and sanitation services to the
urban poor.
Te review, therefore, is an attempt to explain why
water and sanitation governance frameworks must
to be pro-poor. It acknowledges that if the critical
challenges underlying the MDG for water and
sanitation are to be met, it is essential to understand
why most countries lag behind in the first place, which
in turn calls for a critical review of the following
issues: inadequacy of political will at all levels of
government (from national to local); the limited
scope of governance approaches for implementing
this goal, including inadequacy of legal frameworks
and poor management structures in both utilities
and regulatory functions; inappropriate stakeholders
involvement; apparent shortage of financial resources
to meet the goals; and inadequate provision for
resolving conflicts between water supply and
sanitation needs and interests.
Te proposed pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance framework (Part II) is based on global
reviews of existing definitions and concepts of water
supply and sanitation governance and draws heavily
on UN-HABITAT's programmes, projects and
concepts; its aim is to be as operationally feasible as
Te main principles governing this framework are
the following:
n Pro-poor legislation and policies;
n Pro-poor Institutional arrangements;
n Innovative financing/investment
mechanisms; and
n Pro-poor technical arrangements.
Cross cutting-issues that facilitate implementation
of the framework have been addressed to support the
core components, i.e.:
n Development of mapping tools;
n Negotiation and conflict resolution
n Monitoring and evaluation; and
n Embedding gender into the four main
components mentioned above, as well as in
the design, planning, implementation and
management of interventions.
Tis report concludes that, in order for pro-poor
urban water and sanitation governance to work
effectively, cross-cutting obstacles - including the role
of policies along with institutional and regulatory
arrangements that are beyond the water supply and
sanitation sector - must be taken into consideration
in the wider framework of poverty reduction.
5 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te urban poor are generally regarded as a
'vulnerable' group, often plagued by problems
related to insecurity of land tenure, crowded
conditions, inadequate access basic services, and
exposure to environmental hazards as it is they
who frequently live in unsafe environments. Most
of the poor are still to be found in Asia, although
this region has witnessed the sharpest reductions
in poverty. However, extreme poverty is on the
increase in Africa, largely as a consequence of HIV/
AIDS, inappropriate policies and the prevalence of
Te population of the un-served poor differs
from city to city with the characteristics and
determinants of the urban poor being much more
complex than the rural poor; the latter being able
to access off-farm employment or land, while the
former are faced with a multiplicity of factors mainly
those affecting their access to labour markets or
to basic services and amenities. For instance, the
great majority of the urban poor in Mexico live
in overcrowded conditions in precarious dwellings
(made of poor-quality or waste materials) that
lack basic services and urban infrastructure (such
as potable water, sewers and paved streets). In the
poorer areas of Mexico City, the average amount of
water provided per capita is less than 50 litres per
day. In more affluent residential areas, by contrast,
the figure is close to 500 litres per day.
One of the factors contributing to the vulnerability
of the urban poor is marginalisation, which occurs
at different levels: exclusion in policies, lack of
involvement in decision-making processes and
inadequate service provision. While the persistent
1 Poverty is understood to be a condition where people are deprived of the freedom to decide over their own lives and shape
their future. Lack of power and choice and lack of material resources form the essence of poverty. See, SIDA, 2002. Perspec-
tives on poverty. Available at http://www.sida.se
2 Schteingart, Martha, "The environmental problems associated with urban development in Mexico City" in Environment and
Urbanisation, Vol. 1, no.1, April, England, 1989.
marginalisation and exclusion of the urban poor
can often be traced to the formal and informal
processes by which economic opportunities
and public goods and services are presented or
allocated, these processes reflect the relationships
between poor households and communities and
formal social, economic and political organisations,
including city level government agencies and non-
governmental organizations.
Te situation of the poor groups is also partly
shaped by a range of informal institutional
arrangements that impact on the ability of low-
income and vulnerable urban dwellers to secure
or enhance their well-being. Tese informal
institutional arrangements – understood here as
rule-enforcing mechanisms, include: customs;
norms and values; religious beliefs, and social
and solidarity networks. Tese structures govern
the ability of the poor to access employment,
commodity markets, land and housing, basic
services, personal security in the home, as well as
wider social support.
With regard to service provision, the urban poor
are the group that most suffers from the declining
performance of utilities that provide basic services
such as water and sanitation; for instance, during
shortages, rationing of water affects the poor most
adversely as their storage facilities are either non-
existent or inadequate. At the same time, and
despite the popular belief that the poor cannot pay
for water, there is increasing evidence that the poor
often do pay more than the better-off consumers:
for instance, buying water from street vendors at
high cost, bribing water officials, paying fees to
slum landlords for access to illegal connections, or
1.0. Introduction :
Rationale and Significance of Pro-poor Urban Water and
Sanitation ordinances
6 Review of existing concepts of water governance
queuing for long hours at public water sources.
As formal utilities normally do not provide
for demand by the poor for water supply and
sanitation services, small-scale providers account
for up to 70 per cent of water supply and sanitation
service provision in most developing countries;
the services are of poor quality, and tariffs are
normally higher than those charged by formal
utilities, given that there are no legal, institutional
and regulatory frameworks defining the activities,
roles and responsibilities of the independent service
providers, particularly those operating in informal
As far as national authorities are concerned, one
of the most direct influences city governments
have on the scale and nature of poverty is in what
they do or do not do with regard to provision for
water, sanitation, drainage, solid waste collection
and health care and in supporting housing
construction and improvement. Most nations have
undergone some form of decentralisation that has
affected urban governments, and in cities like
Cebu, Philippines and Ahmedabad, India, this has
given city authorities more scope for improving
infrastructure and service provision; however, it
is still common for the power and control over
funding for most infrastructure investment to
be retained by higher levels of government, as is
evident in Bangalore (India), Santiago (Chile) and
Mombasa (Kenya).
One reason for this is the desire
to keep power and resources in the hands of the
political party in power at national or state level. It
should not, therefore, be necessarily assumed that
the introduction of elected municipal governments
and mayors ensures more effective infrastructure
and service provision, especially – as in Mombasa,
Kenya - higher tiers of government inhibit the
development of effective urban authorities.
Te potential contribution of city and municipal
authorities to poverty reduction is often under-
estimated, as discussions of poverty reduction usually
focus on inadequate incomes or consumption, and
on the role of national government and international
3 WSP, 2004. New Designs for Water and Sanitation Transactions: Making private participation work for the
poor. Available at http://www.wsp.org/publications/global_newdesigns.pdf
4 WSP, 2004. Ibid.
5 See ADB report, 2004. 'Local governance and pro-poor service delivery'. Available at: http://www.adb.
agencies in addressing this. Still, with the multiple
deprivations associated with poverty, city and
municipal authorities usually open up considerable
scope for action: unsafe, insufficient, poorly accessible
and often expensive water, unsafe or inaccessible
(and often expensive) sanitation, lack of solid waste
collection, and lack of health care. Inevitably,
the quality and extent of housing, infrastructure
and service provision is influenced by local power
structures, including the extent to which low-income
groups can influence local government policies and
resource allocation, and by the relationships between
local and higher tiers of government.
Provision of clean drinking water, sanitation and
storm water disposal has evidently become a major
challenge for urban centres in the developing world.
Tis review addresses the many issues of urban water
and sanitation governance and attempts to develop a
pro-poor urban water and sanitation framework; it
works from the premise that although there is no agreed
standard definition of the concepts of governance,
(water governance, pro-poor water governance, etc.),
it is now widely accepted that with regard to water
supply and sanitation, governance is much more
than the formal institutions of government, as it
includes a whole range of actors within society such
as community-based or grassroots organisations,
non-governmental organizations, trade unions, faith
based organisations, and businesses - both formal
and informal, alongside the various branches of both
national and local government.
Te next section (1.1.) provides an overview of
the issues that account for the need to develop a
pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance
framework. Section 2.0 offers examples of existing
definitions and concepts of water governance,
identifying the inherent gaps within them. Section
3.0 gives a regional snapshot of the water supply
and sanitation issues and challenges facing Africa,
Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, using
available statistics and actual case studies. Section
4.0, assesses current UN-HABITAT programmes
and their application of concepts pertaining to water
governance, including the strengths and weaknesses
7 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
of different approaches. Some examples of pro-
poor water and sanitation policies by donor and
development agencies are reviewed under section 5.0.
Te emerging typologies of pro-poor governance
principles gathered from reviews of the discussions
in sections 1.0 to 5.0 are presented under section
6.0. Section 7.0 details the proposed pro-poor urban
water and sanitation governance framework, which
has been prepared as a separate document. General
conclusions at the end of the report (section 8.0.)
highlight the strengths and potential challenges in
implementing the proposed framework.
Te framework focuses on the practicalities of
implementation in pro-poor governance and
the inclusion of existing relevant concepts in
the operations of UN-HABITAT projects and
1.1. Why Pro-poor Urban water
and sanitation Governance?
In many parts of the globe, access to water
is coming under increasing focus as a crucial
ingredient in economic advancement; efforts are
made to understand the limiting factors impeding
its sustainable development.
Most 21
water forums have, therefore, focused on water and
poverty as one of the major themes for discussion,
in the process highlighting a rapid increase in the
number of urban residents without adequate water
and sanitation services, and the fact that many
settlements that have traditionally been categorised
as rural are now showing increasingly urban
Tere is a global recognition that urban poor groups
in low-income areas are hardest-hit by water supply
and sanitation problems; more specifically, urban
sanitation lags behind water provision, both in
delivery infrastructure and allocations in national
budgets. Many poor people also face problems of
water security because of natural disasters and as
victims of conflicts over water resources.
See, Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Water Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. At http://www.idbdocs.
iadb.org.wsdocs Visited on 02/07/06
7 It is almost universally agreed that any settlement with over 20,000 inhabitants is urban. However, many countries consider
smaller areas as urban as well. The criteria that most countries use in defning 'urban' includes: population size, population
density, and social and economic factors. See International Journal of water resources Development: Water Management for
Large Cities. Volume 22 No. 2 June 2006. pp185
Te majority of people without access to adequate
water services live in Asia, while Sub-Saharan Africa
has the highest proportion of people without water.
Other countries like China face a water resources
crisis of multiple dimensions throughout the
country: the fundamental issues for China are not
only technical, but also involve institutions and
management instruments, and solutions may depend
more on political understanding and political will
rather than funding.
Te role of governance in improving the lot of
poor people is succinctly captured in the following
statement by the director of Britain's overseas
aid agency, the Department for International
"Tere is an array of evidence that suggests that
poor people are less able to avoid the adverse
consequences of poor governance and therefore bear
a disproportionate share of the ill effects of systems
and structures of governance that do not reflect their
interests… Tere is … a very strong case, supported
both by anecdotal and by more rigorous analytical
work, that leads to the conclusion that there should
be a concern to improve governance."
Other reasons explaining the focus of this study
on improving water supply and sanitation services
to the urban poor include the issues discussed
below: demographic changes; the need to widen the
governance scope; monitoring the progress towards
achieving the Millennium Development Goals;
addressing accountability issues; and increasing
investment and funding in favour of the poor.
1.1.1. Demographic changes
According to the UN World Water Development
Report 2 (WWDR II)
, the present global population
is around 6.4 billion and growing at some 70 million
per year, mostly in low-income countries. It is further
projected that by 2030 the number will stand at 8.1
billion and at 8.9 billion by 2050, with most of the
growth occurring in low-income countries. In these
Cornell, Stephen and Joseph P. Kalt, Reloading the Dice: Improving the Chances for Economic Development on American Indian
Reservations, Harvard Project on American Indian Development, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University,
March 1992.
9 UNESCO/UN Water, 2006. The World Water Development Report 2. Water, A shared Responsibility. See http://www.unesco.
8 Review of existing concepts of water governance
countries, growth over the next two decades will be
concentrated in urban areas; by 2020, 50 percent
of the developing world's population will be urban,
with most living in small and medium-sized towns
and many of these being low-income households.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, by 2015, urbanisation will
have progressed from about 32 per cent today to
about 45 per cent; to put it differently, the urban
population will have grown from the current 215
million to about 400 million. Rapid urban growth
means that more than half of the additional increase
in services must be in urban areas, despite their
higher current levels of coverage.
It must be noted that rapid urbanisation presents both
challenges and opportunities, and therefore the fact
that cities grow is not necessarily negative. However,
an all too rapid pace of growth entails a number of
problems if the process is not managed properly for
all inhabitants. For instance, infrastructure cannot
be developed rapidly enough to provide adequate
water, sanitation, transport, electricity etc. for the
people moving into urban areas. Given these rapid
demographic changes, the challenge is to provide the
basic infrastructure required by nearly two billion
people in urban areas in the developing world,
while at the same time reducing the proportion of
people without access to water supply and sanitation
services. Improving water supply and sanitation
provision to the urban poor, therefore, remains an
urgent priority, since incremental improvements in
water supply and sanitation can have major positive
impacts on health, efficiency and productivity.
Clearly, a major problem for many urban centres
stems from the fact that the rates of urbanisation
have generally far exceeded the capacities of national
and local governments to plan and manage the
demographic transition processes in an efficient,
equitable and sustainable way.
As far as water
supply and sanitation is concerned, the poor
comprise the majority of potential new customers
in most urbanizing cities, and utilities need the
skills, knowledge and will to adequately respond to
10 Cross,P. and Morel A.WSP-AF, Nairobi. Pro-poor strategies for urban water and sanitation services delivery in Africa.
11 International Journal of Water Resources Development: Water Management for Large Cities. Volume 22 No. 2 June 2006.
this demand and design services with the particular
needs of low-income customers in mind. In addition
to substantial demand for new infrastructure, there
will also be a need for commensurate investments in
capacity building, operations and maintenance.
1.1. 2. Widening the governance scope
In many countries, effective laws/regulations and
regulatory frameworks are in place, but actual water
supply and sanitation provision and management
in the water sector in general remain very poor.
Most references to decision-making processes on
governance, and in particular water governance, tend
to explain away existing problems as the by-products
of institutional arrangements and the participation
of stakeholders. However, in reality, underlying
political processes are also involved that are as much
about economic and social power as they are about
institutional problems.
Recent research has confirmed that the way in
which societies govern their water resources has a
profound impact on settlements, livelihoods and
environmental sustainability. Many current water
crises are in fact largely problems of governance
rather than the application of appropriate technical
and management criteria in harnessing water
sources and water quality
, and yet governance has
traditionally received less attention than technical
issues. Governance structures that exclude the
poor clearly contribute to the fact that more than a
billion people in the world lack safe drinking water
and nearly three billion have no access to adequate
Terefore, water governance is a complex and
dynamic process that calls for adaptive analysis,
as highlighted in the World Water Development
Report II: "conventional water planning remains
rigid and the challenge remains to develop adaptive
governance frameworks and institutions… " and
"the most appropriate solutions may be those that
emphasise both the importance of enabling processes
and frameworks that can be applied to resolve issues
in situations of economic or other constraints and in
12 UNESCO/UN Water, 2006, ibid
9 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
contexts of change".
It has also been pointed out
in this report that most water governance problems
are generated by the structures and relationships
between socio-economic groups (including local
communities and indigenous peoples), socio-cultural
perceptions (including incentives to sustainable use)
and development expectations.
Tis suggests that on a wider scale (particularly on
the local and ecosystem/basin level), any proposed
approaches to water governance may have to make
provision for economic and conservation financing
instruments that are highly adaptive if they are to
address the needs of diverse socio-economic segments
of the population.
A framework is needed within which to examine
the interaction between politics, laws, regulations,
institutions, civil society, water service providers and
the consumer-voter.
1.1. 3. Monitoring achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
In order to meet the target related to water and
sanitation, it is necessary to examine and/or establish
the means through which approaches to water and
sanitation access and provision can be made to work
for the poor and the most underprivileged segments
of society by linking the Goal 1, Eradicate extreme
poverty and hunger' with target 10 Halve, by
2015, the proportion of people without sustainable
access to safe drinking water and sanitation'; and
the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation adopted
at the World Summit on Sustainable Development
(WSSD) and its new target (reducing by half the
proportion of people who have no access to basic
sanitation by 2015); and the commitment by all
nations to produce plans for integrated water
resources management by 2005.
A recent study by the UK Department for
International Development on the target for water
supply and sanitation
analyzed key elements of
governance in 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa
and Asia. Tough preliminary and qualitative in
13 Ibid.
15 ERM DFID study: Meeting the MDGs – what will it take? April 2005.
nature, the study found strong evidence that those
countries with the strongest governance frameworks
also tended to be the most likely to achieve the target
for water supply and sanitation.
Although the general international consensus is
that improved governance is a necessary condition
for achieving integrated water management in line
with the Millennium Development Goals, there
is an identified lack of understanding about the
measures required to improve and secure pro-poor
water governance. It may be important, therefore, to
explore the reasons why most of the urban poor have
to rely on more costly and lower quality water supply
and sanitation alternatives instead of more affordable
and sustainable conventional means.
Tis goes to show that achievement of many of the
MDGs is dependent upon the effective delivery of
services at the local level, and it is primarily at the
local level that citizens can meaningfully hold their
leaders accountable for fulfilling these goals. Tis is
particularly true for the poorest populations.
1. 3.4. Strengthening the existing
weak water and sanitation utilities
In most countries of the developing world, the
legitimacy of governments seems questionable
since water governance institutions are weak and
In spite of efforts to change policies
affecting access to water access, and its allocation,
development and management, the question still
stands: How does water governance work to help
improve the delivery of water and sanitation services
to the poor? Although country sector reforms have
been implemented in many areas, newly-formed
utilities are yet to fully optimise service delivery to
the poor.
Water utilities in many developing countries are
predominantly in the public sector, although private
sector involvement is being considered in one form or
other in some areas of the world. For utilities in most
parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, delivery of
water supply and sanitation services to the urban
poor is clearly a key strategic challenge: operation
16 Merlee S. Grindle. Good Governance: Poverty Reduction and reform in Developing Countries. Kennedy School of Government
Havard University, November 2002.
10 Review of existing concepts of water governance
and maintenance (of which utilities have different
conceptions) of the existing water supply and
waste water treatment systems are often hampered
by inadequate funding, as is the construction of
new ones. Tis challenge will also determine the
long-term survival of utilities confronted with the
prospect of playing a more marginal role in sprawling
and dysfunctional cities. Te Kampala Statement -
published in February 2001 during the water utility
partnership conference in Kampala, Uganda and
endorsed by 317 delegates from 38 African countries,
including six ministers - captured this situation well:
"a well-performing and financially sound utility is
an absolute necessity, but an insufficient condition
for serving the urban poor".
Although extending basic services to the urban poor
has for a long time been considered a peripheral issue
for utilities, it is now increasingly recognised as a
strategic goal by planners and policy-makers alike.
For instance, ongoing sector reforms have brought
the issue of services to the poor into sharp focus,
although most developing countries in Africa and
elsewhere lack the governance frameworks required
to enhance business partnerships between main
utilities and small-scale providers.
Bringing water supply and sanitation to informal
settlements in urban centres poses a huge challenge
to service providers, as nearly all tiers of government
have generally given lower priority to these areas. In
addition, urban planners believe that adequate cost
recovery for the provision of services is not possible,
since services are delivered to poor people. A recent
assessment of the water supply and sanitation
situation in informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya
indicates that conflict between utilities and small-
scale independent providers of water and sanitation
services is rife due to lack of appropriate governance
structures for the operations of the latter.
Source: World Bank (2005)
17 Osinde, 2006. An Assessment of the activities of small-scale providers of water and sanitation in Nairobi's informal settle-
ments. (a WSP-AF commissioned study).
11 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te stagnation cycle (Figure 1 above) highlights the
challenges facing many water and sanitation utilities
operating in urban areas if they are to extend and
maintain adequate and sustainable services to all
poor groups, including those who live in low-income
and unplanned settlements. Te cycle emphasises
the fact that utilities are critical for water supply and
sanitation service provision in urban Africa and that
services to the poor must become a central tenet of
their business strategy.
Extensive use of public taps in most urban areas has
been seen as a good indicator of poor management
practices. Te better managed utilities in regions
like Asia (e.g. in Bangkok, Tailand; Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia; and Singapore) have no public taps because
they already have 100 per cent coverage. Tis means
that public taps often indicate lower levels of service,
as well as higher water wastage. In addition, utilities
cannot recover revenue from such taps, and city
authorities are reluctant to subsidise them directly
from municipal taxes.
Te dire economic situation of most utilities in major
urban centres and small towns is compounded by
inadequate cost recovery as well as inefficient billing
and collection systems. As indicated in an Asian
Development Bank review (ADB, 2003) of Asian
cities, fewer than 50 per cent of connections are
metered properly and the cost of reading, billing and
maintaining meters is often significantly higher than
the total revenue collected from consumers.
Experience from a number of countries shows that
significant improvement in service delivery to low-
income urban areas is possible through innovative
management and financing mechanisms as well as
community and private sector initiatives. However,
many utilities do not know how to achieve this,
nor do they understand the pitfalls or the obstacles
18 International Journal of Water Resources Development: Water Management for Large Cities. Volume 22
No. 2 June 2006. pp197.
1.1. 5. Improving local government
institutional accountability
Local government institutions (e.g. water ministries
and local sub-branches) - the conventional political
and administrative institutions which, for the
most part, are the organizing principles of water
management in most countries - are intended
to be one of the levels of water governance which
facilitates accountability and democratic control.
Te assumption is that local government has existing
institutions and mechanisms in place for ensuring
and regulating service delivery.
Still, this (local) tier of governance faces challenges
of its own; this is because in most developing
countries, society is typically strong but Government
is weak and exposed to the risk of mismanagement
and financial bad practice. Tis is why proposals
for effective water governance, as outlined above,
highlight the need for openness and transparency in
the structures and institutions governing water.
In this regard, it has been noted that in most
developing countries, public authorities are
responsible for essential development infrastructure
but that this form of (water) resource governance
has shifted towards society-steered approaches
in a bid to find the accountability and coherence
required to overcome corruption.
Rogers and
Hall have advocated a combined effort - i.e., more
specifically, some joint commitment by government
and various groups in civil society, particularly at
local/community levels as well as the private sector,
in order to ensure pro-poor water governance.
1.1.6. Global concern for human rights
Because lack of power and choice often makes it
difficult for the poor to obtain adequate material
resources, the democratic or human rights aspect
of poverty interacts with the material dimension.
As such, the human-rights approach emphasises the
inclusion of all people, including the poor and the
As articulated in the 'Human Development Report
2000', what the human rights approach can add,
19 According to Rogers and Hall, governments are too often caught up in contradictory roles, being the
simultaneous provider of services and the guaranteed source of accountability for the same services. Where local government is
weak or non-existent, society has no legal base.
12 Review of existing concepts of water governance
and has already added, to human development work
is a focus not just on overall development outcomes,
but on the processes by which such outcomes are
achieved; and not merely the achievement of national
development goals, but the achievement of human
development at the individual level.
A human rights approach has also integrated
the achievement of political and civil rights and
democratic freedoms such as participation in
development dialogue. Furthermore, as the approach
introduces the language of entitlement to certain
development goals, it has allowed the apportionment
of responsibility and accountability where human
rights are not fulfilled. Accountability has become
one of the defining elements of good governance,
among both countries and donors. Based as it is
upon the individual, the human rights approach has
focused attention on marginalised groups such as
the poorest, in the process increasing the importance
of governance at the local level because this is where
the poor have the greatest hope of participating and
of holding public authorities accountable for the
fulfilment of these rights.
1.1.7. The need to intensify a pro-
poor focus at the local level
In both new and existing democracies, there often
exist entrenched systems of power and privilege,
both at the national and the local levels. However,
as emphasised in the 'Human Development Report
, "there is nothing automatically pro-
poor about decentralisation." At the local level,
decentralisation without appropriate controls can
further exacerbate the problems faced by the very
poor, as local governance mechanisms may be
captured by local elites to their own advantage. Tis is
particularly true where the poor may be the majority
nation-wide, but a powerless minority at many local
levels. Teir needs may be further overlooked when
power is devolved away from the centre, where some
of their rights may be safeguarded, to the local level
where the reverse situation may prevail.
With regard to water supply and sanitation provision,
it appears that most national governments have failed
20 UNDP, 'Human Development Report 2003', pp. 140.
to delegate adequate powers and resources to local
authorities and groups, and as a result there is a lack
of capacity to make water supply and sanitation for
the urban poor work effectively. Te tendency is for
national governments to separate policy (and related
decision-making mechanisms) from implementation,
which poses a huge challenge to any effective water
governance structure.
1.1. 8. Responding to urban conflicts
over water in low-income settlements
Water-related urban conflicts often arise where power
relations control and effectively restrict access to
water by the inhabitants of squatter settlements; that
is, when urban leaders and local power groups hold
control over water and impose their own interests
upon those of the community as a whole.
In both cases, conflicts emerge because of the
institutional vacuum caused by lack of government
involvement in urban water management. In the
typical low-income squatter settlements, there is
neither a legal framework nor institutions to regulate
access to water and the provision of this service. Tis
situation allows certain individuals or entities to
exercise a kind of independent power over water, as
the only law is the one they impose upon the rest
of the population. As a result, violence becomes a
way of resolving differences. Potential for dialogue
or negotiation is scarce for lack of social regulation
which, if any, is constantly transgressed.
increasing competition for water affects the poor
most, and scarcity at local level causes conflict
within households and between the various groups
of users.
1.1.9. Addressing the challenge of
leveraging financing/investment
A core challenge facing the water supply and sanitation
sector is financing. Te current trend is to promote
'leveraging' of additional finance into this type of
activity, looking beyond sector-focused allocations in
the national budget as well as traditional grants and
sovereign loans. Tese promotion efforts include the
21 Osinde, 2005. Integrating Conficting Resolution Approaches in water governance institutions and structures. A case study
of Kenya and Tanzania. Published MA dissertation submitted to the department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford, UK,
March 2005.
13 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
1. 2.0. Lack of emphasis on
overall sanitation
Sanitation is one of the most important interventions
in favour of an improved human condition. Yet
many agencies overlook hygiene and sanitation
because they are not included in their mandates. In
some cases, an implementing agency has appropriate
staff or structures for the water but not the sanitation
element. It is recognised that delivering the new
sanitation target requires considerable political will,
together with significant technical, financial and
human resources. Terefore, improved sanitation
provision has a major role to play in development
and poverty reduction and brings major benefits to
the urban poor.
Clearly, the pace of sanitation implementation is set
not by administrative ability to provide facilities, but
by consumer demand, so that it rarely matches the
progress of other measures.
development and growth of domestic capital markets,
support for domestic private sector entrepreneurs,
and use of different types of finance (including
equity, guarantees, and commercially-based debt).
Still, the potential for leveraging is often limited,
due to constraints relating to legal and regulatory
banking frameworks, financial sector governance,
and capacity within the sector to manage and expand
business using different products and services.
In order to create the enabling environment
necessary for reforms of both the financial sector
within countries, and the business environment for
domestic private entrepreneurs to operate, efforts
towards establishing effective mechanisms for
the leveraging of pro-poor financing/investments
are necessary. Depending on the country and the
structure of its Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, it
might make sense to focus on core governance issues
– including institutional arrangements, legal and
regulatory functions, and monitoring and evaluation
– before focusing on specific water sector or financial
Past experiences by development agencies show that the main problems in achieving sustainable sanitation
projects were an over-reliance on supply-driven approaches, neglect of user requirements, and an emphasis on
large-scale projects. Agencies found that for projects to be sustainable, the focus must be on the demand for
sanitation at household level. Additionally, projects need community involvement, especially by women. How-
ever, the demand-responsive approach to sanitation may be constrained by poor people's inadequate purchasing
power. Similarly, sanitation suppliers may not be able to meet demand.
Marketing sanitation
Selling sanitation on the strength of its health benefts alone has been largely inefective, although sanitation can
be marketed like any other consumer good. Social marketing could increase demand, with sanitation advertised
as a home improvement that provides security, convenience, privacy, lack of smell and fies, and improved social
status. However, there has been limited research into the efectiveness of marketing as far as increasing demand
is concerned.
Source: Post note, December 2002 Number 190 Access to sanitation in developing countries Page 4. Available at: www.
Box 1: Demand-responsive approaches to sanitation
14 Review of existing concepts of water governance
On the basis of the above analysis, it is evident that
provision of clean water and adequate sanitation
services to all residents of urban areas, and particularly
the poor, is a complex endeavour and, therefore, a
major challenge of the 21
century. Efforts must
be accelerated in a number of areas: improved
financing mechanisms; capacities and resources
of utilities; improved infrastructure development
for improved water quality; strong and adequate
political will; and efficient legal, institutional and
regulatory structures. Greater focus should be placed
on adequate sanitation services covering both basic
sanitation and wider-hygiene sanitation.
Low-income countries are where the impact of
urbanisation seems bound to be at its strongest,
posing enormous challenges particularly with regard
to infrastructure and services. Many of the existing
water supply and sanitation service arrangements
will face the specific challenge of reducing the
number of urban poor people with inadequate water
supply and sanitation services. Terefore, various
political, economic, financial, institutional and
governance issues will be of great material import to
the achievement of the water and sanitation target.
Te main reason for focusing on urban water supply
and sanitation is that inadequate water and sanitation
remains the most critical and widespread poverty-
related problem in low-income urban settlements
Section 2.0 below reviews various general concepts
and definitions of water governance, highlighting
their common underlying principles and providing
the basis for a discussion of urban water and
sanitation governance.
15 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te emergence of governance can be traced at
country level to a disgruntlement with the State-
dominated models for economic and social
development that were prevalent throughout the
Socialist bloc and most Tird World countries in the
1950s, 1960s and 1970s. From about 1990 to 1999,
the word 'governance' progressed from obscurity to
widespread use, with a variety of views emerging as
to what it means, with 'governance' sometimes even
being used as a synonym for 'government'.
the fact that its appearance in discussions about social
organisation is a recent development, 'governance' is
therefore not a new word. See Box 2 below.
Te quote referred to in Box 2 above mentions
two important notions featuring in this review:
'government' and 'governance'. Making a distinction
between the two is significant at this stage to avoid
confusion, which could otherwise have serious
practical consequences (for instance, it may affect
not only the definition of a problem, but also the
analysis of how to resolve it).
22 A World Conference on Governance in Manila in June 1999 attracted over 850 participants from countries
around the world. A study on the incidence of articles on governance in development literature identifed that while at the start
of the current decade, the subject received little attention, during the late 1990s there has been almost geometric growth in
articles on this topic. Unpublished literature review by Dr. Jay Gonzalez at National University of Singapore, 1999.
2.1. The Difference between
'government' and 'governance'
'Governance opens new intellectual space… it
provides a concept that allows us to discuss the
role of government in coping with public issues
and the contribution that other players make. It
opens one's mind to the possibility that groups
in society other than government (e.g. commu-
nities of the voluntary sector) may have to play a
stronger role in addressing problems.' (Institute
of Governance, Ottawa, Canada: Principles
of good governance in the 21
century. Policy
Brief No. 15)
'Government' as representation: Representation is
inevitable in large societies and more often than not
is inevitably imperfect, too.
Tis capacity involves
government to play a central public role of being
responsible for:
n setting the overall policies and laws for develop-
ing and managing resources
n establishing both regulatory and management
23 Restructuring the Relationship, Part One, Canadian Communications Group, Ottawa, 1996, p.115.
24 Resources will be referring to the water and other related infrastructure (infrastructure being the means by which water is
conveyed from the resource to users, and returned, often at lower quality, to the resource base) needed to meet user demand.
The factors that need to be considered when assessing resources are the potential impacts of short- or long-term land use
and/or climate change, as well as those of agricultural intensifcation, demographic change and industrialisation on water
quality. Given that access to, or use of, water resources may be regulated, assessment of water needs must also take in water
policy and the institutions that have responsibility for managing and regulating the use of water resources (including their
capacity and effectiveness). See also WHiRL working paper No. 10.
2.0. Understanding Governance:
General Concepts & Definintions of Water Governance
In 1999, an international gathering of some 20 academics and government ofcials traced the roots of 'govern-
ance' back to the 17th or 18th century in English, and collected defnitions from diferent sources which illustrated
the progressive widening of its meaning. As the group's rapporteur noted, "The changed role of government and
the changed environment in which it has to discharge its role have brought governance into common usage as a
process for which the word 'government' is no longer sufcient."
Source: Corkery, Joan, "Introductory Report", in Governance: Concepts and Applications, Corkery, Joan (ed.), with
IIAS Working Group, International Institute for Administrative Studies, (Brussels, 1999), p.12.
Box 2: The Origins of " governance"
16 Review of existing concepts of water governance
frameworks and institutions which will correctly
implement these policies and water regulations
and which will accommodate all the stakehold-
ers – from both the public and private sectors;
n developing necessary cooperation at all levels of
water users and providing basic services to soci-
Representatives rather than citizens direct the
activities of governments, and at times this
arrangement opens up a gap between these groups.
For effective implementation of national and local
government policies and laws, governments cannot
operate in isolation; therefore it is essential to
involve all those with a role in the development and
formulation of the policies and regulations that lead
to effective water management and use.
It is important to note that because government
establishes overall laws and regulations, most
people mistakenly assume that the responsibility of
governing the resources of various sectors is, or should
be, carried out through government governance,
which comprises management, control, supervision
and accountability.
However, managing resources
engages diverse stakeholders at different levels, and
therefore both decision-making on allocation, and
regulation of the resource, go beyond government
governance since government is just but one of
several agents in any given society. Interest in public
issues (for example, resources and public services)
is not confined to government but involves other
With regard to water, we must note the State's
important role in defining property rights, laws (i.e.
the policing responsibilities that protect productive
assets) and the challenging issues with this aspect
of government role, i.e. the extent to which public
awareness and allocation of water rights serve only
certain segments of a population or its whole. For
instance, if management of water resources is
excessively dependent on private markets or public
authorities, will the poor, isolated and socially
un-mobilised groups maintain access to water in
25 The design and operation of governance is important at various levels, from government minister to implementing organisa-
tions. Central government is concerned with policy objectives set by parliament. Ministers are responsible and accountable
for achieving these objectives. The essence of sound governance, from the perspective of ministerial responsibility, is that
there are enough safeguards enabling a minister to bear ministerial responsibility. Human society always comes with some
form of governance. Private organisations such as corporations and clubs have management, rules, and fnancial administra-
tion similar in function to those of government. The difference is that private governance is voluntary, while state-based
government is coercively imposed on the people within a given jurisdiction.
26 The list of other agents also includes civil society—sometimes referred to as the non-proft sector—encompassing voluntary
agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs); the media; business organisations; religious organisations; and sometimes
the military.
proportion to their numbers or needs?
'Governance' is a more inclusive term, which reaches
beyond government functions and "embraces the
relationship between society and its government"
Governance concerns itself with the way governments
and other societal organisations interact, how they
relate to citizens, and how decisions are made in an
increasingly complex world.
Terefore, with regard to water, the focus of governance
is the human and institutional resource capacities for
the sustainable development and operation of water
resources and management systems. Tis is achieved
through involvement of decision-makers, managers
and users of the resource, who share an interest and
sometimes a role in addressing public issues in a
socially acceptable manner. Te idea of governance
makes it easier to have discussions about the way
communities or other social actors can take action
in collaboration with, or perhaps independently of,
established government structures to address issues
of concern to citizens.
When understood as taking decisions about
(as different from government),
governance does not provide the framework with
details of who steers the decisions for the relevant
society; some observers have expressed concern that
this formulation has objectionable connotations
of top-down direction. Defining governance as an
art of steering societies can also be erroneous in its
assumption that it is a straightforward process, akin
to the task of the steersman in a boat.
As Joan Cockery points out, governance is neither
simple nor neat—by its nature it may be messy,
tentative, unpredictable and fluid because it involves
multiple actors. One definition of governance that
captures the difference with 'government' is one
proposed by Louise Fréchette, Deputy Secretary
General of the United Nations:
"Governance is the process through which ...
institutions, businesses and citizens' groups articulate
their interests, exercise their rights and obligations
27 Rogers, P. and Hall, A.W. 2003. Effective water Governance.
28 Corkery, Joan, "Introductory Report", in Governance: Concepts and Applications, Corkery, Joan (ed.), with IIAS Working
Group, International Institute for Administrative Studies, (Brussels, 1999), p.12.
17 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
and mediate their differences."
In this definition, 'government' is thought of as an
institution, while 'governance' is seen as the process,
and this is perhaps where the fundamental difference
between the two terms lies. It is therefore important
to note that governance is not synonymous with
government but is instead a complex process which
considers, inter alia, multi-level participation, beyond
the State, where decision-making includes not only
public institutions, but also the private sector, non-
governmental organisations, and society in general.
2.2. An analysis of existing definitions
of water governance
Governance is generally understood to refer to the
way decisions are made, who participates in decision
making, and how they participate.
More specific
to this assignment, concern over water governance is
due to perceived crises in existing water management
resulting in the failure to provide water for poor people,
resolve conflict, and protect the environmental and
human health. Improved understanding of water
governance will, therefore, reveal how societies can
develop and change water management practices
over time, although there is so far no one standard
definition of water governance. As hinted to in Joan
Cockery's point above, water governance cannot
be captured in a simple definition. However, it is
important to refer to some of the existing definitions
of water governance and identify the commonly
accepted attributes of an effective water governance
a) The International Development
Research Centre (IDRC) definition
'Water governance is a trans-disciplinary field,
which explores how water management policies
and practices are formed and changed over time….
It involves the processes that encourage people to
actively participate in designing, planning, managing
and implementing water management activities
while fostering communities' ability to innovate and
29 This was quoted in a speech to the 'World Conference on Governance', Manila, May 31, 1999.
30 UN-HABITAT, 2003. Concept Paper
adapt to changing circumstances'.
According to the International Development
Research Centre, water governance is as much
about the art of social change as it is about the
science of hydrology, underscoring the whole idea of
conceptualizing water governance within the specific
needs of a given region, city and/or sub-city. Te
attributes of water governance that the International
Development Research Centre espouses in this
definition are hinged on the fact that to be effective,
water governance should encourage participation in
the processes for deciding how water is used; promote
innovation and learning among stakeholders; and
foster adaptation to changes in water availability.
It is suggested in this approach that three elements
will contribute to effectiveness of water governance
regimes, namely policies that enable participatory
water management; capacity to engage in the
policy process and the ability to negotiate among
b) The Global water Partnership (GWP)
'Water governance refers to the range of political,
social, economic and administrative systems that are
in place to develop and manage water resources, and
the delivery of water services, at different levels of
In this definition, the Global Water Partnership
provides a set of principles that could necessitate
effective application of water policies and subsequent
sustainable development. Te Global Water
Partnership clearly states the different levels of
relevant systems while providing an appropriate
starting point from which to consider many difficult
issues of water policy and related development issues.
However, one of the criticisms levelled at the Global
Water Partnership definition in the United Nations
World Water Development Report is as follows:
considering that it makes a different use of the notion
of water governance and that its scope is evolving
with ethical implications and political dimensions
31 Bruce Currie-Alder, Lorra Thompson and Rocio Bustamante Draft, 13 April 2006.
32 Global Water Partnership, 2003. Effective Water Governance: Learning from Dialogues. Report presented to the World Water
Forum, Japan, March 2003.pp.16
18 Review of existing concepts of water governance
that are still under debate
, the definition should
include the following dimension:
"… questions of financial and administrative
efficiency… broader political concerns related
to democracy, human rights and participatory
processes…relationship between the political-
administrative and ecological systems…
management, operation and maintenance of
infrastructure and service."
c) Rogers and Hall's definition
Rogers and Hall
have pointed out that, in its
own specific way, governance is intensely political:
It acknowledges the fact that power exists inside
and outside the formal authority and institutions
of government, and because of the ever-increasing
demand for accountability and transparency,
effective water governance should be in place both in
the public and in the private water sectors. From this
perspective, governance is all about the way in which
power is exercised: who has influence, who decides,
and how decision-makers are held accountable, i.e.,
a network of inter-related activities through which
societies or communities articulate their interests
and reach decisions. Te goal of governance here
is to create safeguards enabling the objectives to
be achieved, against a background of management
responsibility, effectively establishing an 'enabling
Some general 'principles of effective water
that have been identified by Rogers
and Hall and which are underpinned in most water
governance frameworks include the following:
openness and transparency; inclusiveness and
effective communication; coherence and integration;
equitability and ethics.
Te emphasis on performance and operation as
provided for in Rogers and Hall's definition is on
accountable, efficient, responsive and sustainable
processes. One of the basic and common tenets
of effective water governance highlighted in this
discussion is the creation of an enabling environment
33 The United Nations World Water Development Report. Water for People Water for Life. World Water Assessment Programme.
2003. pp 371-372.
34 See, The United Nations World Water Development Report. Water for People Water for Life. World Water Assessment
Programme. 2003. pp 371-372.
35 Rogers, P. and Hall, A.W. 2003. ibid.
36 Rogers and Hall, 2003. ibid.
that facilitates efficiency across all the various
dimensions and which articulates the involvement of
various stakeholders, including the poor and other
underprivileged members of the community.
Specific areas (highlighted by Rogers and Hall) of
interest in current water resource discussions and fora
that influence the effectiveness of water governance
systems include: the role of information and
consultation networks; the role of legal instruments
– formal and informal institutions; the relationship
between structures of law and government, and the
room for action by individuals and groups on an
informal and flexible basis.
One of the approaches suggested by Rogers and
regarding the formulation of effective water
governance structures includes the following:
a) an ability to design public policies and
institutional frameworks that are socially
acceptable and can mobilise social resources to
support them;
b) the main focus is on the internal governance
(with politics as the main driving force) in
relation to the functions, balances and structures
that govern the water resource and its delivery;
c) the framing of social agreements on property
rights and the relevant structure to administer
and enforce them (i.e., the law); and
d) the role of external governance (i.e., influence
from civil society and 'current' government).
Tis is also in line with suggestions made in Debating
on the need to search for new forms of
pursuing collective action that enable coordination
of social systems, considering that the capacity of
the State to endorse such collective action has been
reduced due to globalisation, internationalisation,
decentralisation, and the development of other
cohesive policy networks. It is suggested in Debating
Governance that good governance generally ensures
transparent use of public funds and encourages
private sector growth while promoting effective
delivery of public services and helping to establish
the rule of law.
37 Rogers and Hall, 2003, ibid.
38 Central to effective water governance is the need for combined commitment of government and various groups in civil society,
especially at community level as well as the private sector. See Rogers, P. and Hall, A., Effective Water Governance. Global
Water Partnership Technical Committee (TEC), The Background Papers No. 7. pp. 16-17.
39 Good governance generally ensures transparent use of public funds, encourages growth in the private sector, promotes effec-
tive delivery of public services and helps establish the rule of law; but it is still not quite clear how the tools that are suggested
in most studies and/or frameworks and their indicators, actually work for the poor. See Pierre, 2000. Debating Governance.
19 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te principles of water governance as articulated
by Rogers and Hall are reiterated in the first World
Development Report (UN 2003), which emphasises
the need to give consideration to the way power and
authority are exercised and distributed in society,
and to what extent citizens can participate in
decision-making. In other words, water governance
includes the political processes through which water
management institutions and practices are created
or changed. Tis understanding is similar to the
adaptive governance referred to by Dietz et al.
(2003) as the 'need to (make decisions) in the face of
substantial uncertainty, and … reconciling amongst
people and groups who differ in values, interests,
perspectives, power, and the kinds of information
they bring to situations.'
d) The United Nations Development
Programme definition
Te United Nations Development Programme
defines State governance as:
'the exercise of economic, political and administrative
authority to manage a country's affairs at all levels. It
comprises the mechanisms, processes and institutions
through which citizens and groups articulate their
interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their
obligations and mediate their differences.'
Te United Nations Development Programme
definition merely states what water governance
is comprised of, i.e., process, mechanisms and
institutions, etc.; it does not indicate who undertakes
these or how to proceed, considering that challenges
are systemic in nature and inextricably linked to
broader social, political and economic issues in
water governance. Te concern is about ensuring
reliable access to safe drinking water and proper
sanitation, where one of the important ingredients
would be creating a platform for integrating the
poor community's voice in decision making. Te key
issue is about establishing a framework that allows
engagement of the urban poor to satisfy their water
needs and requirements.
40 UNDP Report, 2001. UNDP Water Governance Available at: at http://www.undp.org/water/, Water Resources Management.
e) The Asian Development Bank
Te Asian Development Bank's definition is limited
to the way power is exercised in the management
of a country's economic and social resources for
Notably, in both the United Nations Development
Programme (2001) and the Asian Development Bank
(1999) reports, some general similarities are apparent
in what is perceived as effective water governance:
both institutions emphasise the significance of
the principles mentioned above and put forward
participation, transparency, equity, accountability,
coherence, responsiveness, integration, predictability
and ethics as some of the key dimensions for effective
water governance that meets the needs of the poor.
Tese key principles indeed provide the basis for
evaluating the performance and operation of the
public utilities that provide water and sanitation
services, and therefore also a basis for identifying
any existing weaknesses in management structures.
f) The Inter-American Development
Bank (IADB) definition
'Governance of water is a sub-set of the more general
issue of society's creation of physical and institutional
infrastructure, and of the still more general issue of
social cooperation, which reminds us of the problems
of defining who are the stakeholders, communication
among stakeholders, the allocating of contributions
and outputs, and the creation of institutions'
With this definition the IADB acknowledges
that governance is more inclusive concept than
government per se, and embraces the relationship
between society and government.
As it highlights the important aspects of water
governance, the IADB identifies two sets of
governance: interior governance and exterior
governance. It suggests that both the water
provision enterprise, with its rules and provisions for
monitoring and enforcing its rules, and the social
41 The ADB defnition of governance is, however, limited to the way power is exercised in the management of a country's
economic and social resources for development.
20 Review of existing concepts of water governance
arrangements and laws outside it, provide governance
with its context, and one within which the provision
enterprise is nested. Both interior and exterior
governance affect the water provision enterprise and
can make it succeed or fail. According to the IADB,
exterior governance may be such that the provision
enterprise never comes into existence, or never even
occurs to anyone as a solution to a collective water
access problem. Terefore, in a sense, a favourable
or, at least, neutral external environment or setting
is critical for the existence and success of a water
provision enterprise, subject to its ability to meet
certain conditions internally as well.
Te IADB framework identifies the following
categories for water governance principles: ethical,
sustainable, integrative, equitable, communicative,
efficient, coherent, effective, accountable,
participative, transparent, and open.
In this framework, IADB goes further to identify
those aspects contributing to the inefficiency of
water supply and sanitation service delivery:
n market failure (including existence of upstream
or downstream externalities; poor economies
of scale; high transaction costs of buying and
selling water; irreversible choices; water utility
monopolies ; inadequate policies);
n government failure (including failure to correct
market distortions; price regulation; over- or un-
der-regulation; conflicting regulatory regimes;
voter ignorance and imperfect information;
little entrepreneurial incentives for internal ef-
ficiency; inadequate response to consumer pref-
erences, and the bundle purchase effect); and
n system failures (including institutional structures
that impede use of politics; absence of legisla-
tion; lack of mechanisms for cross-sector dia-
logue; coordination, decision making, and con-
flict resolution).
Many of these failures are serious and must be faced
when developing water governance. Tese three
types of failure are inherent to all liberal economic
regimes in all countries and must be addressed
through government action. Tose likely to prove
most difficult deal with are institutional and
communication gaps. An empirical examination
of how to overcome the problems caused by these
failures is essential in each individual setting if
effective water governance is to be achieved.
2.3. International principles of water
a) The Dublin Principles, 1992
Te Dublin principles that guide Integrated Water
Resource Management are as follows:
(i) Fresh water is a finite and vulnerable
resource, and one that is essential to sustain
life, development and the environment.
(ii) Water development and management
should be based on a participatory
approach involving users, planners and
policy-makers at all levels
(iii) Women play a central role in the provision,
management and safeguarding of water;
(iv) Water has an economic value in all its
competing uses and should be recognised
as an economic good.
Trough the "participation clause" and "water as an
economic good," the Dublin Principles bring water
firmly under the State's function of establishing and
maintaining a system of property rights, while the
principle of management at the lowest feasible level
asserts the relevance of meaningful decentralisation.
b) The Hague Ministerial Declaration,
At the 2nd World Water Forum at Te Hague in
1998, good water governance was identified as one
of the main challenges facing governments looking
to achieve water security. Te Hague Ministerial
declaration calls for "governing water wisely to
ensure good governance, so that the involvement of
the public and the interests of all stakeholders are
included in the management of water resources."
Te Ministers viewed good governance as water
43 Rogers, Peter, 2003. Water Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean.
21 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
resource management involving public interest and
stakeholder participation.
c) The UN Millennium Assembly, 2000
At the UN Millennium Assembly (2000), Heads
of State emphasised conservation and stewardship
in protecting our common environment and
especially "to stop the unsustainable exploitation of
water resources, by developing water management
strategies at the regional, national and local levels,
which promote both equitable access and adequate
d) The Bonn 2000 Ministerial Declaration
Te Bonn 2000 Ministerial Declaration
recommended that "each country should have in
place applicable arrangements for the governance
of water affairs at all levels and, where appropriate,
accelerate water sector reforms."
It identified three
areas where priority action was required, one of these
being governance. Te approach taken to governance
at Bonn was a macro one, however, and demanded
action to ensure that water resource management
was both equitable and sustainable, putting the
onus on national governments. Te elements that
were initially associated with governance, such as
public participation, transparency and information
availability, remained intact while mobilisation
of financial resources was tackled separately from
e) The Johannesburg Plan of
At Johannesburg, governance was seen as encompassing
"sound environmental, social and economic policies,
democratic institutions responsive to the needs of
the people, the rule of law, anti-corruption measures,
gender equality and an enabling environment for
. Acknowledgement that the financing
of water projects depends upon "good governance"
was made explicit at Johannesburg. Para. 26 of
the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation sets
out a comprehensive list of actions to be taken in
44 Bonn Recommendations for Action, and the Bonn Keys, available at http://www.water-2001.de/.
45 Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development U.N Doc. A/Conf.199/20, 2002, Plan of Implementation, 8.
Available at http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/.
the legal sphere for the achievement of Integrated
Water Resource Management, which will lay the
foundations for improved governance.
f) The World Urban Forum III, Kyoto
At the third World Water Forum, the much-awaited
Camdessus Panel Report asserted that "serious
defects in the "governance" of the global water sector
hamper its ability to generate and attract finance".
Te importance of water supply and sanitation
service provision by private actors, as highlighted in
both the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and
the Camdessus Report mentioned above, demands
that attention be paid to the transnational legal
issues relevant to business transactions involving
foreign investors. Consequently, the role of law in
water governance must be assessed in three different
n International (sovereign, State-to-State level);
n National (domestic legislation); and
n Transnational (public-private relations at
multinational level).
g) Integrated Water Resource
Management (IWRM)
Te three main stakeholders that Integrated Water
Resource Management must coordinate have been
identified as resource managers, system managers,
and users (and their representatives).
Since these
groups function at different and multiple levels, the
boundaries of their areas of interest and responsibility
seldom coincide. Consequently, the major challenge
for Integrated Water Resource Management lies in
determining the procedures and practical tools for
establishing a common understanding of the causes
of water-related problems, and agreement on steps
to overcome these problems, as a vital component
46 Report of the World Panel on Financing Water Infrastructure: Financing Water For All, 2003, 9.
47 Resource managers: are responsible for the macro level development and management of water resources. Increasingly
organised on a catchment (or aquifer) basis, their responsibilities typically include licensing, data collection and manage-
ment, and large-scale balancing the needs and resources.
System managers: are responsible for managing water supply systems and infrastructure (usually on a sector basis) for domestic,
irrigation, industrial or other uses. The scale of responsibility for system managers ranges from individuals managing their
own water source to utilities and authorities working on a municipal or catchment basis.
Users (and their representatives): are the people (and wider environment) that use water, and their representatives responsible
for ensuring that needs are met. It includes individual users (who at the smallest scale are also the system managers), user
groups, NGOs, regulatory authorities, and various tiers of government. See WhiRL
22 Review of existing concepts of water governance
of the Integrated Water Resource Management
Te Integrated Water Resource Management
toolbox (detailed in Global Water Partnership,
2004) includes decentralisation/devolution,
public private partnerships, the use of pricing to
help drive efficiency, and the use of other market
mechanisms, including domestic trade in water in
some instances. It is, however, currently lacking in
practical tools for integrated problem identification
and domain definition. What the tools do not take
into consideration is the fact that not every one of
them is well suited to every nation or community,
and not every tool will be applied in the same way
in every instance. In fact, Integrated Water Resource
Management is increasingly seen as too complicated
because it requires that a whole list of individually
challenging tasks be completed before anything can
be done. Integrated Water Resource Management is
also seen as too long-term oriented and incapable of
addressing real, current needs, whilst governments
and water managers are faced with a whole host of
immediate and tangible problems (such as domestic
water supply and sanitation) for which practical
solutions must be found.
While the implementation and achievement of
international goals and targets is the preserve of
national governments, it must be remembered that
governance covers a wide range of issues, which may
transcend individual nations and extend beyond
national borders.
For example, the implementation
of Integrated Water Resource Management requires
a basin-wide approach to trans-boundary waters
– and more than 250 of the world's major rivers are
shared by two or more countries. Te diversity in the
interests of potential actors or stakeholders in water
management is one of the major challenges facing
Integrated Water Resource Management
48 See, Butterworth, J. and J. Soussan (2001) Water Supply and Sanitation & Integrated Water Resources Management: Why
Seek Better Integration?, WHIRL Project Working Paper 2, Paper Prepared for WHIRL Project Workshop on 'Water Supply
& Sanitation and Watershed Development: Positive and Negative Interactions', Andhra Pradesh, India, 5-14 May 2001.
NRI,UK http://www.nri.org/WSS-IWRM/
49 Alan & Wouters, 2004. What Role for Water Law in the Emerging 'Good Governance' Debate. At www.dundee.ac.ak/law/
50 "Integrated Water Resources Management" (IWRM) is now the dominant paradigm for water management in both rich
and poor countries. IWRM is defned as a process that promotes the coordinated development and management of water,
land and related resources, in order to maximise the resultant economic and social welfare in an equitable manner without
compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems (See, GWP 2000). The World Bank, regional development banks, most
bilateral donors, and many national governments have adopted IWRM policies, following similar defnitions.
In the field of water management, therefore,
governance has become a popular concept, especially
in the post-2000 period, although there is still no
accepted definition of this concept, or consensus on
the way in which good governance can be achieved.
While water governance has become a popular
concept, it should be noted that it is neither equivalent
to Integrated Water Resources Management, nor is
it an alternative to water management.
h) The World Water Development Reports,
I and II
Te emphasis on the role of negotiation in ensuring
that services work for low-income groups implied
here lies in the framework developed for the 2004
World Water Development Report on Making
Services Work for the Poor and is based on the notion
that demands for improvement must come from the
poor people themselves, with the expected degree
of improvement depending on the level of influence
these poor groups have on service providers (directly
or through governments).
Te Second World Water Development Report
further offers a comprehensive and holistic
assessment of the world's water resources, bringing
issues of water governance, knowledge accessibility,
and specific challenges of managing water into the
mainstream of development thinking and practice.
Te World Water Development Report outlook on
water governance is summarised as: 'Governance
systems determine who gets water, when and how,
and decide who has the right to water and related
Tis WWD report, therefore, reiterates what has
been noted in most definitions above, namely, that
governance systems are not limited to 'government'
but include local authorities, the private sector and
civil society. Although significant and steady progress
is being made in ensuring adequate water supply,
and although at the global scale there is plenty
of freshwater, estimates in the WHO/UNICEF
Monitoring Programme of the people lacking
adequate supply and access to basic sanitation are
alarming. Te reasons cited in this report include
51 The UN World Water Development Report is the joint effort of 24 UN agencies and entities involved in water resource
management and is produced on their behalf by the UN Water Assessment Programme, whose secretariat is based at UNESCO.
23 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
mismanagement, corruption, lack of appropriate
institutions, bureaucratic inertia, and a shortage of
new investments in building human capacity as well
as physical infrastructure.
It is further argued that pro-poor interventions
intended to support the water sector are not
achieving wider coverage because financial resources
for water are stagnating: Out of a total of US $ 3
billion in Official Development Assistance a year,
and an additional US $ 1.5. billion allocated to
the water sector, only 10 per cent is directed to
support development of water policy, planning and
programmes; and only 12 per cent of these funds
reach those most in need. In addition, although
private sector investment in water services is also
declining because of the high political and financial
risks in developing countries, it 'would be a mistake'
to write off the private sector altogether.
Te second World Water Development Report
emphasises that lack of citizen access to basic
information on water quality and quantity
can seriously hamper their chances of halting
environmentally unsound water projects or of
holding relevant government agencies accountable.
Terefore, the report highlights that lack of
capacity and of a knowledge base as today's primary
obstacles to achieving the required levels of water
i) The UN-HABITAT definition of urban
UN-HABITAT's understanding of good urban
governance is based on its operational experience
and the Habitat Agenda, which highlights the fact
that good governance means the difference between
a well-managed and inclusive city and one that is
poorly managed and exclusive. Te understanding
is that urban governance is the sum of the many
ways in which individuals and institutions (both
public and private, formal and informal) plan and
manage the common affairs of the city, and also as
the continuing process through which conflicting
or diverse interests may be accommodated and
cooperative action taken.
52 UNHABITAT, 2002. Concept Paper: The Global Campaign on Urban Governance. 2nd edition.
UN-HABITAT 's definition embraces the principle
of urban citizenship and affirms that no man, woman
or child should be denied access to the necessities
of urban life including adequate shelter, security of
tenure, safe water, sanitation, a clean environment,
health, education, etc.
2.4. Conclusions from the definitions
Inherent in most of the above frameworks/concepts
of water governance is the subtle agreement that
ethical issues such as responsibility, accountability,
transparency, equity and fairness are fundamental
requirements for good governance.
It is equally evident that good (water) governance
acts as an active ingredient in reducing poverty
since it touches all aspects of both the public sector
and other social fabric, ranging from institutions
that set the rules of the game for economic and
political interaction, to organisations that manage
administrative systems and deliver goods and
services to the public, to the human resources in
government bureaucracies, and the interface of all
of these arenas.
Te existing definitions show that more water
infrastructure alone is not the solution to water
scarcity; perhaps more innovative planning, operation
and maintenance using existing processes and
frameworks will enable identification of constraints
within given contexts.
It is worth noting that most of the definitions of
water governance given above do not place enough
emphasis on the poor as potential key stakeholders;
it is still not quite clear how the tools, principles
and indicators that are put forward actually work
for the poor, showing a clear need for an improved
understanding of governance, which will in turn
reveal how societies develop and thereby change
water management practices over time.
What is also missing in most of the discussions on
water governance reviewed here is how strategies must
24 Review of existing concepts of water governance
be formulated to implement adequate governance in
more realistic terms, instead of generalised statements
which merely outline the general principles of 'good
governance'. Governance is clearly an extremely
complex concept to implement, not only in the
water sector, but also in all other development-
related sectors. Too many factors and actors intersect
at different points, times and locations, which
means that good governance can probably best be
considered as a general road map to progress, rather
than a specific and well-defined destination to
Most of the definitions and concepts discussed above
show a lack of understanding of the legal issues
underpinning governance, which is an essential
aspect of effective water resource management
and achievement of the Millennium Development
Goals. Clearly, water laws (local, national, regional
and international) must be part of the solution – a
failure to recognise this will certainly undermine the
best of all intentions.
However, it must be noted that the quest for further
understanding of water governance is already
evident in the agendas of most international and
local discussions on water and its relation to poverty,
where a host of questions arise about how whatever
needs to be done is to be negotiated to serve the
interests of civil society, and in particular the poor
and marginalised members at local level and in small
Tere is also a growing perception that effective
water governance requires open social structures,
which enable broader participation by civil society,
private enterprises, information networks and other
legal institutions that relate to access to, allocation,
development and management of water resources.
Tis is pointed out in a recent research study by the
UK Department for International Development on
water governance and poverty undertaken by the
Bradford Centre for International Development
which highlights that the diffusion of
pro-poor governance will be facilitated by, or even
be dependent on, poor groups gaining more power
53 See, Water Governance. Available at http://www.thirdworldcentre.org/governance.html
54 Andrew Allan and Dr Patricia Wouters "Good Water Governance for People & Nature: What Roles for Law, Institutions &
Finance?" 29 August – 1 Sept 2004
55 BCID, 2005. Water Governance and Poverty: What Works for the Poor? June 2005.
and influence either through representative political
structures or through more direct participation in
water and sanitation provision – whether in planning,
installing, managing and/or monitoring. Tis report
argues that, inevitably, this type of outcome is
influenced by the larger governance context – for
instance, whether poor groups can organise and,
when necessary, protest; and also whether they can
get adequate and accurate information about water
It can be concluded from these observations
that there are no general solutions for a very
heterogeneous world, and any definitions of water
governance or pro-poor water governance should be
focused at regional, national and even sub-national
levels, with due recognition of the importance of
adding more voices, responsibilities, transparency
and accountability to the formal and informal
organisations associated with water access and
management as a whole. Tese observations should
also inspire proposals for practical principles and
measures to improve existing governance or the
means to create new structures in which the poor
can participate in the planning and implementation
processes of interventions aimed at improved water
supply and sanitation service delivery.
Overall, 'good governance is essential for managing
our increasingly-stretched supplies of freshwater and
indispensable for tackling poverty… there is no one
blueprint for good governance, which is both complex
and dynamic… it must include adequate institutions
– nationally, regionally and locally – strong, effective
legal frameworks and sufficient human and financial
56 See, UNHABITAT, 2006. Meeting Developing Goals in Small Urban Centres. pp. 248
57 UNESCO's secretary General's comment of the importance of good governance in tackling poverty. Quoted in the Second
25 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
According to the Global Water Supply and Sanitation
Assessment 2000 report, the majority of the world's
population without access to improved water supply
or sanitation services lives in Africa and Asia. Two-
thirds of those without access to improved water
supply and more than 3/4 of those without access
to improved sanitation live in Asia. Box 3 below
provides a summary of the regional levels of access
3.0. Regional urban water and sanitation: Challenges and dynamics
Current Practices in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
Asia: Lowest for Sanitation
Estimates for Asia in 2000 show that sanitation coverage is by far the lowest of any world region, with 54 per cent
still lacking sanitary facilities. Easy access to a safe water supply is the second lowest, after Africa, with 20 per cent
yet to be served. Disparities in sanitation coverage vary even more: 69 per cent of the rural population lacks sanita-
tion coverage compared with 26 per cent in urban areas. The same is true for safe water coverage: 27 per cent of
the rural population are without safe access compared with seven per cent in urban areas.
Africa: Lowest for Water Supply
Home to about 13 per cent of the world population, Africa remains the greatest challenge in accelerating water
and sanitation services coverage in the world. In 2000, approximately 36 per cent of the population had no easy
access to safe water supplies and about 40 per cent had no access to sanitary facilities. The fgures for various areas
show greater disparities: 50 per cent of those in rural areas have no easy access to safe water compared with 14 per
cent in urban areas. As much as 52 per cent of the rural population lacks sanitation, compared with 20 per cent in
urban areas. And these gaps are widening.
Latin America & the Caribbean: Greatest Disparity between Urban and Rural Areas
This region has relatively high service levels, and coverage eforts are slowly closing the gap between the haves
and have-nots. The remaining overall coverage gap for safe water supply is estimated at 14 per cent and for sani-
tation at 23 per cent. But stark disparities surface in diferent areas. While sanitation coverage is estimated to be
around 86 per cent in urban areas, it falls to about 49 per cent in rural ones. Urban water supply coverage is esti-
mated at 94 per cent, while the fgure in rural areas is 66 per cent.
Independent water supply and sanitation providers
Research in six Latin American and 10 African countries has confrmed the important role of independent water
supply and sanitation service providers. It is estimated that 25 per cent of urban residents in Latin America and 50
per cent in Africa depend on such providers for water. Levels increase to 50 per cent and 85 per cent, respectively,
for sanitation. Independent providers emerge in response to demand and an enabling environment. Where they
provide network services, as is common in Latin America, they compete for clients and sometimes charge even
lower prices than formal-sector utilities, which are often subsidised.
Source: WEHAB Working group, August 2002: A framework for action for water and sanitation; and UNDP/World Bank
Water and Sanitation Programme, 1999: Water and sanitation programme 98-99 Report. Final draft.
Box 3:
Regional Snapshots of water supply and sanitation situation
in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean
26 Review of existing concepts of water governance
and provision of water supply and sanitation for Asia,
Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
3.1. Asia
Although statistics show that most of the world's
poor live in Asia, the region has experienced the
sharpest reductions in poverty.
In Bangalore,
Colombo, Naga and Makati, there is evidence that
steps taken towards poverty reduction have worked
well (see Box 4 below).
In 'Asian Water Supplies - Reaching the Urban Poor',
Arthur C. McIntosh views water governance as both
a core problem and part of a core solution; he points
out that when water supplies in developing countries
are examined, low tariffs, which allow governments
(not consumers) to take charge, lie at the core of the
water access problems facing the urban poor.
3.2. Latin America and the Caribbean
Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is the most
urbanised region in the developing world: 70 per cent
of the population live in cities and towns. According
to the World Bank, in the LAC region seven out
58 See http://www.adb.org/water/theme/thematic_framework.pdf
59 Examples of problems facing the urban poor are: high NRW rates, intermittent water supplies, lack of demand management,
and confict among users.
of every 10 poor people live in urban areas, and 39
per cent of urban households live below the poverty
A number of cities in Latin America and the
Caribbean have been experiencing problematic and,
to some extent, conflict situations with the quantity
and quality of their water supply despite continuous
efforts to establish adequate water governance
frameworks and interventions. In Latin America,
and regardless of the enormous water resources in
many parts of the continent, attention has turned
away from the financial aspects of development
and to governance as the bottleneck to sustainable
use of water resources.
According to IADB research (Lord and Israel, 1996,
Garcia and Valdes, 2000, Garcia, 1999, and Garcia,
2000) and its own, December 1998 paper on Strategy
for Integrated Water Resources Management, the five
major factors behind water crises are the following:
n lack of integrated planning of water
n the dispersion and poor coordination
between government agencies, non-governmen-
tal organizations, local authorities, the intellec-
tual community and the multilateral, bilateral,
60 UN-HABITAT, Global Urban Observatory. Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium? Working
Paper, 2003, p.41
61 Clearly, huge sums of money will still need to be spent in the water sector in the coming years, but there is a nagging suspicion
that similar huge sums have already been spent in the past decades and which have not been wisely used.
These cities face a variety of challenges in addressing the needs of the urban poor. They have addressed poverty
reduction in diferent ways and it is interesting to see the routes they have taken- and some of the future direc-
tions they are planning to take to reduce urban poverty. All the practices shared are concerned with implementa-
tion. Although some of the cases started as pilots, they have now gone beyond that stage and have been main-
streamed into routine municipal business.
Many of the improvements came about as a direct result of working in partnership with stakeholders outside gov-
ernment. These presentations review experiences of local government working in partnership with civil society
and the citizenry, and in some instances, with the private sector. These cases demonstrate how a variety of actions
over a number of years have led municipalities to refect on their experiences and formalise aspects of their work
practices on service delivery through new policies. Through experimentation and learning-by-doing, new policies
on services delivery, partnerships, and participation have emerged.
Source: http://www.adb.org
Box 4:
Case studies showing improved water supply and sanitation
delivery in Asia –Bangalore, Colombo, Naga, and Makati
27 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
and international agencies who are involved in
water planning (in any one case as many as 150
different actors may intervene in a plan);
n a lack of transparent (clear) rules and
effective institutions for arbitrating
conflicts over water use;
n an emphasis on certain management
instruments, and often imported concepts,
over carefully thought-through instruments
that may fit the local conditions better; and
n a lack of awareness of what is actually
necessary for effective water governance.
Lord and Israel (1996) provide a good description
of market, government and system failures, as
discussed earlier, together with suggested remedies
for the national water strategies of the various Latin
American countries, including:
Photo ©:
28 Review of existing concepts of water governance
n Roles and functions of the public and pri-
vate sectors;
n Balance between environmental and pro-
duction/economic roles;
n Te extent and means of centralisation and
decentralisation of functions;
n Sector-based and integrated management;
n Degree and practicalities of community and
stakeholders participation; and
n Extent and practicalities of public regula-
tion and areas of entrepreneurial freedom.
A major governance (political) dilemma faced in the
development of water resources in Latin America,
according to Garcia and Valdes (2000), is the
tendency to privatise the benefits and socialise the
costs. Many of the countries in the region have now
adopted a national water policy and are in the process
of completing national water plans. According to
IADB, Water Policy must be translated into laws
articulating water rights and how to deal with water
quality. Te plans should also include investment
policies, public sector institutional reform, an
indication of the balance to be struck between
environmental and productive/economic roles for
water, the role of the private sector, cost recovery and
pricing policies, as well as investment appraisal.
In Latin America, apart from Argentina, Brazil, and
Mexico, most countries still rely solely upon national-
level institutions. Te range of service providers
is wide, usually including local authorities but
increasingly public-private partnerships of some sort
for water supply and, to a lesser extent, wastewater
treatment. Latin America is richly endowed with
civil society institutions and community-based
organisations, many of which are involved in grass-
roots level water and sanitation service delivery.
An effective pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance framework would help address
institutional capacity-building needs and provide
mechanisms for assessment of public institution
performance. A comparative study of institutional
regimes is suggested by Rees and Solanes, (2001)
as an attempt to devise criteria for the assessment
of institutions and management systems as part of
governance principles: operational effectiveness;
economic efficiency; distributive equity;
environmental quality; consultation/participation;
integrated, holistic management; and declared
governmental expectations.
3.3. Africa
Currently, most African cities are characterised by
rising urban poverty, unsustainable environmental
practices and social exclusion of the poor. According
to a Global Urban Observatory Working Paper
(2003), several factors account for this situation,
including lack of clear pro-poor urban policies, poor
governance, and decelerating economic growth.
Te report argues that poverty will continue to
concentrate in cities if national and local governments
fail to address this policy dimension. In 2001, out of
the 49 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), 34 were
located in Africa, and in these as much as 82 per cent
of the total urban population were living in slums.
Africa has the lowest water supply and sanitation
coverage of any region in the world; more than one
in three Africans has no access to improved water
supply or to sanitation facilities. Te Millennium
Task Force on Water and Sanitation noted that,
while some impressive gains had been made towards
meeting Target 10, "Africa is the only continent off
track towards meeting Target 10 with both water and
sanitation". Terefore, Africa raises the most difficult
challenge with regard to timely achievement of Target
10; to do so, the number of people served with safe
drinking water would have to double. An estimated
350 million more people, half rural and half urban,
will need to be served by 2015. It is estimated that
the total investment required to achieve the 2015
target for water is at least US $ 20 billion (or US $
1.5 billion per year). For sanitation to meet Target
10, at least another US $ 10 billion would be needed.
Te Millennium Development Goals have therefore
highlighted the urgency in meeting the challenge
of developing water supply and sanitation services
for rapidly expanding informal and peri-urban
settlements in African cities and towns.
62 Global Urban Observatory. Slums of the World: The face of urban poverty in the new millennium? Working Paper, 2003
29 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te challenges facing Benin as listed in Box 5
above are a reflection of what is going on in many
other countries within Africa. In Kenya, although
provision has been made under the New Water Act
2002 to better serve the poor in informal settlements,
operational and implementation realities must
be worked out by all those concerned. Practical
strategies for collaboration and effective provision
of water and sanitation services must be developed,
considering that currently there is no systematic link
between the utilities and small-scale independent
providers (SSIPs). Among other things, well-defined
governance structures must be designed for guidance
to ensure that collaboration and partnerships with
SSIPs effectively improve service delivery.
With regard to Kenya, although under the New
Water Act 2002, the Nairobi Water and Sewerage
Company (NAWASCO) has been mandated to
provide water to all people under its jurisdiction, it
is important to note that some constraints effectively
discourage and restrict or even prohibit utilities and
local authorities from providing adequate services to
low-income urban settlements. Terefore, inadequate
The Ministry of Mines, Energy and Water is responsible for water supply in Benin. In urban areas, SONEB is a new,
national public utility in charge of water supply in urban areas. At present, the urban sub-sector lacks a cohesive
strategy and the major challenges there relate to billing and fnancing. Sanitation (including solid and liquid waste
management) in both urban and rural areas is handled by a department within the Ministry of Health (DHAB). The
need for capacity building of the local municipalities is evident, including strengthening local divisions of both
DHAB and the Hydraulic General Directorate (DGH) if these are to carry out their mandates. In urban areas, sub-
stantial funds and capacity will be required to help the newly-created SONEB increase its coverage and provide
improved services.
According to available statistics, at the end of 2004, 57 per cent of Benin's population had access to safe water,
and 37 per cent had access to sanitation. To reach the goals in 2015, an additional 4.25 million people will require
access to safe water, and 3.24 million to sanitation. If these objectives are reached, nearly two million will still lack
access to safe water, and 4.5 million will lack access to sanitation. To achieve the Millennium Development Goals,
current capacity must be increased by a factor of 3.83 (based on the last four years). For sanitation, current capac-
ity must be increased by a factor of 1.93.
The key issues to be addressed in order to facilitate the sustainability of water supply and sanitation approaches
in urban areas in Benin include the lack of:
• capacity at the district and local levels to implement policy changes that shift responsibility to these
• institutional capacity to implement legislative and regulatory reforms;
• fnancing capacity to implement and scale up programmes at national level;
• a sanitation strategy and a programmatic approach at sub-sector level that would facilitate improved water
supply and sanitation performance, particularly given limited awareness of the need for proper drainage
systems in urban and peri-urban areas.
Source: WSP-AF. Draft MDG review on Africa: Is Africa on Target to meet the MDGs on water and sanitation? May, 2006.
Box 5: Water supply and sanitation challenges in Benin
30 Review of existing concepts of water governance
household water and sanitation remains the most
critical and widespread problem in these low-income
urban settlements, hindered as it is by factors like
lack of appropriate institutional arrangements and
unclear organisational mandates.
As one of the strategies for improving service
provision, most governments are trying to provide
frameworks that encourage and support participatory
engagement as well as 'smart partnerships' to allow
for development of locally appropriate solutions.
In Kenya, for instance, where the government is
committed to reducing the proportion of people
without sustainable access to safe drinking water by
2015 (as spelt out in the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals), production capacity is large
and theoretically sufficient to meet demand, and
yet total water available for actual sale and use is
significantly lower. Unaccounted-for water (UFW)
is estimated at about 50 per cent. More specifically,
Nairobi, (estimated population: 3.5 million) has an
63 The UFW is attributable to both technical losses (leakages, especially in older pipes) and commercial losses (unbilled and
uncollected revenues, and theft). Both bulk- and client-level metering are highly inadequate, and the data on water use and losses
are unreliable. For households, bills are based on presumed consumption. The billing system is poor,
collection effciency (or revenues collected as a proportion of total billed) is 65 per cent , and accounts receivable stand at more
than two years of billings (World Bank, Paper No. 5, January 2005).
installed production capacity of 420,000 cubic meters
of water per day and 182,295 legal connections, (of
which 164,000 are household), with many single
water connections shared by multiple households.
Tis means that there are huge deficiencies in the
provision of water and sanitation services, and it is
the low-income informal settlements (being areas of
lowest water supply and sanitation priority), which
suffer the most.
In a World Bank-WSP 10-country study on
independent water and sanitation providers in
African cities,
it is suggested that in order to
set the stage for better delivery of water and
sanitation services to the urban poor, it is crucial
to recognise and regularise the activities, roles and
institutional position of independent providers,
and also to facilitate intermediation, coordination
and partnership between city-wide operators and
independent providers as well as municipal and
national authorities.
64 WSP, April 2000. Independent water and sanitation Providers in African Cities.
31 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Tere is evidence of a growing consensus that those
water and sanitation providers and utilities supplying
low-income areas, including informal settlements,
must be more accountable to those they serve "by
putting poor people at the centre of service provision:
by enabling them to monitor and discipline service
providers, by amplifying their voice in policy-
making, and by strengthening the incentives for
providers to serve the poor."
3.4. Conclusions from regional analysis
Across Africa, Asia and Latin America, the interface
and interplay between water and urbanisation has
caused many governments to recognise the need for
structural reforms in order to break out of the cycle
of poor service
delivery which includes: lagging
collection, weak finances, inadequate maintenance,
deteriorating assets, and lagging coverage.
65 WSP, World Bank, 2004. City-Wide Universal Sanitation: Challenges and strategies. 16th Meeting of the Urban Think Tank,
WSP, World Bank, Washington, D.C.
66 P.Cross and A. Morel
Te challenges to water supply and sanitation
arising from the rapid urbanisation processes are
enormous and impact on many of the prevailing
water management, institutional and governance
paradigms. Te question is whether the current
sector reforms are indeed pro-poor: Underlying this
question is the important role of strong regulatory
agencies for improved and adequate service delivery.
32 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Te main objective of this section is to understand
how best to strengthen water and sanitation
governance in the context of UN-HABITAT's
work, with a view to ensure that delivery of water
supply and sanitation services to the urban poor is
adequately improved. Te pro-poor urban water
and sanitation governance framework will generally
build on the UN-HABITAT working definition of
governance, i.e. ' actions and processes at the local
level, within existing authorities' mandates, which
positively engage poor communities in their pursuit
of adequate water and sanitation' (see the UN-
HABITAT Concept paper on Pro-poor Urban Water
Governance developed by David Satterthwaite).
In this section, we review some of UN-HABITAT's
past and current programmes and its perspectives
on what constitutes an effective pro-poor water and
sanitation framework. Te aim is to improve our
understanding of the following crucial questions:
n What are the current gaps in the understanding
of water (and sanitation) governance?
n How can pro-poor water governance be practi-
cally supported and facilitated?
n How adequate are existing tools, where do they
need further development, and why?
Te overall objective is to ensure that there is
adequate recognition of the mutual dependency
between governance and policies, and the need
to translate the general principles of good policies
into specific pro-poor interventions that involve
government, civil society and the private sector in
extending water and sanitation services to the urban
poor. UN-HABITAT has identified the global scale
of under-provision in urban areas and recognised
that the role of water in achieving poverty reduction
is integral to achieving a number of the Millennium
Development Goals including eradication of poverty
and extreme hunger, the promotion of gender
equality; improved health and education; and
environmental sustainability.
Tis is reiterated in several analyses (including
David Satterthwaite, 2003, 2006; World Bank;
United Nations Development Programme; Official
Development Assistance; Asian Development
Bank, etc.,) reviewed in this report and which have
identified gaps while providing an understanding
of the way in which context-specific mechanisms of
water governance can effectively include or exclude
the poor and un-served, which in turn highlights the
need for better monitoring and evaluation of water
governance procedures and their impact on the poor
(University of Bradford 2005).
4.1. A review of UN-HABITAT programme
activities in urban water and sanitation
In some of its programmes, UN-HABITAT has, to a
large extent, addressed the detrimental consequences
of insufficient water supply and sanitation provision
as it assessed the scale of the phenomenon in urban
areas of the developing world; the agency has also
identified the major constraints to achieving effective
pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance as
it reviewed all relevant policy, institutional, legal,
technical, financial, economic and social factors.
Te concept papers developed by UN-HABITAT
on what constitutes the principles and the basis for
assessment of pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance have equally raised important questions
addressed in this review, including:
n how to map the poor and other stakeholders
in the water supply and sanitation
4.0. An inventory of UN-HABITAT prejects/Programmes:
Focus on developing a pro-poor urban water
and sanitation governance framework
33 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
n how to reconcile the governance perspectives
of different stakeholders;
n developing workable field strategies for
securing good governance;
n identifying appropriate intervention points;
n the need to develop robust diagnostic tools
of specific relevance to water governance.
Current attention, both in projects and in the
concept papers, focuses on the best ways of improving
service delivery, particularly to the poor and the un-
served through strengthened water and sanitation
governance. UN-HABITAT recognises that
addressing the water and sanitation needs of these
urban poor groups transcends aggregated demand
management, and includes assessing approaches to
decision-making; designing appropriate delivery
mechanisms; establishing efficient linkages between
households, communities, local authorities, utilities
and regulatory bodies; and, finally, defining clear
management and leadership systems and structures.
4.1.1. The Global Campaigns for Urban
Governance and Secure Tenure
Te Global Campaign for Secure Tenure was
launched by UN-HABITAT in 1999 to support
the implementation of the Habitat Agenda and
contribute to the eradication of poverty through
improved urban governance. Te need for this
campaign arose from a growing recognition that
the way land and housing access is regulated in the
West does not work well for the poor in developing
countries. Te Campaign's goal therefore is to
increase the capacity of local governments and other
stakeholders to practice good urban governance, and
to raise awareness of, and advocate for, good urban
governance around the world. Te Campaign views
governance as networks of collaboration both at the
institutional level and within social relationships at
the community level.
UN-HABITAT identifies key governance concepts
in its Global Campaign, which include the following
elements: sustainability, subsidiarity, equity,
efficiency, transparency and accountability, civic
engagement and citizenship, and security. Te
Campaign is implemented through four principal
strategies: normative debate; advocacy; capacity
building; and knowledge management.
A survey on governance in 165 countries has
concluded that 'the result of good governance is
development that gives priority to the poor, advances
the cause of women, sustains the environment, and
creates needed opportunities for employment and
other livelihood.'
Tis conclusion supports other
research at the national level, which has demonstrated
that good governance correlates with positive
development outcomes.
UN-HABITAT recognises
that good urban governance is vital in improving the
quality of life in cities. Te development of the Urban
Governance Index, for example, is meant to support
the capacity building and advocacy strategies of the
Governance Campaign: at the global and regional
level, it is expected to facilitate comparison between
cities based on the quality of urban governance,
while at the local level it is expected to catalyze local
action in favour of improved urban governance by
developing indicators that respond directly to their
unique contexts and needs.
As it promotes good urban governance at the
global, regional and local levels, the UN-HABITAT
campaign adopts an explicitly normative position: it
acknowledges that actors, mechanisms, processes and
institutions make a contribution to urban poverty
reduction and to the promotion or otherwise of social
inclusion, since they help inclusion or exclusion vis-
à-vis the benefits of urban life.
According to a recent evaluation,
the launch of
the governance campaigns has taken different
forms as individual countries chose to emphasise
specific issues: for instance, in Brazil the campaign
focuses on financing local development and the
municipalisation of public security, while Burkina
Faso places emphasis on capacity building to deliver
water and sewerage services.
67 UNDP, 1997. Re-conceptualizing Governance. Pg.1
68 See, World Bank, I998. D. Kaufmann, A. Kraay and P. Zoido-Lobaton . Governance Matters I and II. Washington DC. August,
69 Refer to the Discussion of the Expert Group Meeting, Urban Governance Indicators, November, 2002.
70 UN-HABITAT, 2005. Evaluation of UN-HABITAT's Global Campaigns for secure tenure and urban gover-
nance. Evaluation report3/2005.
34 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Te issues highlighted in the campaign have gained
political value, bringing together various stakeholders
and encouraging socio-political mobilisation (for
example, in Brazil and in the Philippines). In West
Africa, the campaigns are seen as an excellent way of
harnessing political energy, while in the Philippines,
the secure tenure campaign is noted for its success in
involving the urban poor as partners in tenure and
shelter improvements.
At national government level, therefore, the
governance index can be used to promote the
identification and exchange of best practices in
urban governance as well as in identifying national
capacity-building and policy priorities. Tis
information would further provide professionals
and institutions with information for comparing
individual performance of cities, which in turn can
lead on to corrective or constructive action.
One of the gaps that have been identified (in
the evaluation report 3/2005) in the current
governance campaigns is that the general principles
of participation, transparency, accountability,
subsidiarity, security, equity, effectiveness, etc. (as
reviewed in June 2001 at a UN inter-agency meeting)
are not automatically inherent in specific issues
highlighted by individual national campaigns, and
therefore need to be reinforced. For instance, at the
local level, where the governance index is expected
to catalyze action, local indicators must be selected
based on the specific assessment of the key barriers
to good urban governance, which will vary from
city to city. Indicators must also be supported by
tools and methods that are specific to local contexts,
particularly if bottom-up, participatory methods are
being applied.
National campaigns must design the best ways of
maintaining the political momentum (e.g. in West
Africa) through clear political and institutional
support processes, so that action plans can be
formulated more realistically to garner support for
In addition, as specific needs are addressed,
71 See discussion in Philippines-Australian Governance Facility, (2001). pp. 54-55. Quoted in UN-HABITAT, 2004. Urban
Governance Index: Conceptual foundation and feld test report
information material must set out those in the
clearest possible way, in order to facilitate target
monitoring and performance assessments.
4.1. 2. The UN-HABITAT Water and
Sanitation Programme
Te objective of the Water and Sanitation
Programme is to contribute to the achievement of
the internationally agreed goals related to water
and sanitation in human settlements, with a
particular focus on the urban poor. With a view
to strengthening its work in the field of water and
sanitation, UN-HABITAT has moved away from
a traditional project by project, donor by donor,
country by country approach to a well-coordinated,
programmatic approach that allows donors to
contribute funds to a facility dedicated to a well-
defined goal and a clear set of objectives.
Tis is achieved through a Trust Fund which
provides a fast-track mechanism for reaching out to
the urban poor. Te fund is structured to provide
a bridge for the urban poor to access the benefits
of city-wide improvements in water and sanitation
which often bypass them. With the poorest water
and sanitation coverage among all regions, Africa is
a priority area for the Trust Fund and programme
activities are initiated through the Water for African
Cities Programme and other individual country and
city initiatives. Special consideration is also given
to initiatives that could improve access to safe water
and adequate sanitation for women and children.
In line with the implementation of the Programme
of Action (PGA) for the Least Developed Countries
(LDCs) for the Decade 2001 – 2010 in the water and
sanitation sector (fostering a people-centred policy
framework; promoting good governance; reducing
vulnerability and protecting the environment; and
mobilizing financial resources), the UN-HABITAT
Water and Sanitation Programme works through
two regional schemes, in Africa and Asia, to facilitate
pro-poor, gender-sensitive investment, in partnership
with two regional (African and Asian) development
banks as well as the World Bank.
35 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te programme also supports replicable, model-
setting initiatives in Africa and Asia, notably
through the Lake Victoria Region Water and
Sanitation Initiative (LVWATSAN) and a similar
initiative in the Mekong region. Tese programmes
support local government efforts to improve Target
10-related water management standards through
support to public authorities. Tese initiatives are
guided by the following thematic priorities and pro-
poor approaches:
n pro-poor investments which involve communi-
ties in the planning, provision and management
of both water and sanitation services;
n leveraging funding for improved sanitation
through partnerships and development of inno-
vative financing and investment mechanisms;
n enhancing 'software' development through ca-
pacity building at the institutional, utility and
low-income urban community levels;
n urban catchment management;
n water demand management;
n water education in schools and communities;
n advocacy, awareness-raising and information
exchange; and
n community mobilisation and gender main-
a) Lake Victoria Water and Sanitation
Initiative – A pro-poor approach to
sustainable water supply and sanitation
Te main objective of the Lake Victoria Water and
Sanitation Initiative is to support secondary urban
centres around the lake area to achieve Millennium
Development Goal targets for water and sanitation
(reducing by half the number of people without
access to water and sanitation by 2015). Te initiative
also aims to promote equitable and sustainable
economic, social and environmental development
for the local population. Te specific objectives of
this programme are to:
n Support pro-poor water and sanitation invest-
ments in the secondary urban centres of the
Lake Victoria Region;
n Build institutional and human resource ca-
pacities at both local and regional levels, so that
water and sanitation services are improved and
become more sustainable;
n Facilitate implementation of upstream water
sector reforms at the local level in the participat-
ing urban centres; and
n Reduce the environmental impact of urbanisa-
tion in the Lake Victoria Basin.
Te pro-poor approaches in the design and
implementation of this initiative include the
n using multi-stakeholder fora for identifying wa-
ter supply and sanitation options in small urban
centres in the Lake Victoria region;
n acknowledging the existence of multiple users of
resources and the potential for conflicts;
n sustainability checks on local authorities and
utilities – performance benchmarks;
n political will – government involvement in de-
fining mandates through MOUs;
n land use planning;
n catchment management;
n way-leaves and compensation.
In collaboration with national governments (Kenya,
Uganda and Tanzania) in the area, UN-HABITAT
has facilitated a rapid appraisal of the current
status of water and sanitation provision through
questionnaire surveys (verified by field missions) in
10 secondary towns in each country, and with the
following objectives:
n assessing the state of the water and sanitation
n quantifying the infrastructure investment
required to achieve Millennium Development
Goals and developing investment plans for
selected urban centres;
n identifying capacity building requirements in
relation to the needs of the low-income urban
n Identifying institutional needs for improved
water supply and sanitation service provision.
36 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Relevance of the project design
to the pro-poor urban water
and sanitation governance:
Demonstrating an integrated approach to the
provision of basic services in these towns (five in
each country) and creating the capacity for these
to manage themselves properly would provide a
model for national authorities and donors (including
international financing institutions) to replicate
this approach in other towns in the region. Tis
initiative puts special emphasis on three types of
action: capacity-building at all levels (with particular
focus on the local level); raising awareness among
the public and policy-makers; and information
sharing and coordination with other programmes in
the region.
An initial assessment of 30 secondary towns clearly
indicates that gains arising from sector reforms in the
37 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
region have largely by-passed the poor communities.
Tis is largely due to the lack of governance structures
which incorporate the poor in the decision-making
A key strategy of the Lake Victoria Water and
Sanitation Initiative is to promote income generation
for the poor through provision of the services it
promotes. For example, community-managed and
micro-enterprise-based water kiosks and pay-and-
use community toilet schemes will be introduced,
drawing on experiences from the Water for African
Cities Programme Phase I. Te Lake Victoria
Water and Sanitation Initiative also promotes the
development of small-scale private water providers
in secondary towns, a process which will support
the generation of additional employment at local
level. Te programme will also pay special attention
to small - scale independent service providers who
are currently responsible for providing most of the
water and sanitation services to poor communities in
secondary towns in the lake region. Te four main
areas of intervention by the Lake Victoria Water and
Sanitation Initiative will include:
(a) facilitating and supporting the formation of
associations of small-scale service providers;
(b) providing access to finance and supporting
development of entrepreneurship skills; (c) regulating
prices and monitoring the quality of water supplied
to consumers; and
(d) establishing linkages with utilities (through
franchising, etc.) to ensure vertical integration and
In all the three participating countries, key
government institutions and officials responsible for
sector reforms have been included in dedicated Task
Forces (see information on Task Groups in Chapter 2:
Methodology of Assessment). Government officials
see the Lake Victoria Region water and Sanitation
Initiative as an important way of implementing
sector reforms at local level. For example, in Kenya,
the Chief Executive Officer of the Lake Victoria
South Water Services Board (an outcome of ongoing
sector reforms) is the focal point for this initiative,
and UN-HABITAT has supported staffing of
the office to respond to the needs of programme
Te initial assessment phase clearly indicates that it
is necessary to retain a certain amount of flexibility
in the planning, design and implementation phases
of the Lake Victoria Water and Sanitation Initiative
projects at town level. Tis is largely attributable
to several factors, such as disparities in, and in
some cases, lack of information on current and
projected urban populations; the impact of changing
institutional and legal structures as a result of sector
reforms; and varying preferences in technology,
willingness to pay, etc.
Flexibility in determining service levels is also
important, as user preferences (and willingness
to pay) are likely to vary over time (and with the
economic development of these towns, which to
some extent should be triggered by the project
itself ). A flexible design would facilitate adjustments
to accommodate any changes in local demand. In
terms of technological choices, a mix of designs may
be preferable in many towns, combining low-tech
solutions with standard engineering designs (e.g.,
on-site sanitation and water-borne systems).
A baseline survey and a series of stakeholder
workshops were conducted in the preparatory phase
of the programme that provided an opportunity
for consensus decisions in these areas to be reached
in an informed and participatory manner. Multi-
stakeholder forums have been established in each
town to help ensure an adequate degree of flexibility
through a consultative process over the course of
project implementation.
Gender responsiveness (both analysis and approach)
will be critical to the realisation of broader
LVWATSAN objectives. A gender mainstreaming
strategy is being developed for the preparatory
phase of the programme, with the focus on gender
analysis (e.g., gender balance in the decision-making
structure), gender-responsive planning (taking into
38 Review of existing concepts of water governance
39 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
account the different needs of women and men with
regard to service levels and options in the beneficiary
communities) and gender-strategic planning (e.g.,
gender-sensitive implementation of sector reforms).
Te gender strategy will also address the need
for improved customer relations, as the majority
of consumers are women - the traditional water
managers in African society.
A coherent pro-poor focus would therefore require
that partnerships are promoted between all levels of
civil society as well as the market and government
levels, and that these all these groups are involved in
planning and implementing the various phases and
components of the Initiative. Tis would ensure that,
from the onset, accountability and transparency
are built into the programme and that investment
is targeted at the poor communities; in particular,
attention must be given to providing a level and
quality of service that the poor can afford and are
willing to pay for.
b) The Water for African Cities (WAC)
Te Water for African Cities Programme was a
direct follow-up to the Cape Town declaration. Te
document, adopted by African water Ministers on
December 1st 1997, addresses the urgent need for
improved water management in African Cities.
Seven cities participated in the first phase of the
Programme which ended in 2002: Abidjan, Accra,
Addis Ababa, Dakar, Johannesburg, Lusaka and
Te second phase of the Water for African Cities
Programme (WAC II) views governance as a social
aspect that is very much culture-dependent and,
accordingly, has been designed to address the needs
of the poor and expand services to low-income areas.
In order to achieve this, the following thematic
priorities have been agreed upon:
n Pro-poor governance and follow-up
n Sanitation for the urban poor;
n Urban catchment management;
n Water Demand Management;
n Water education in schools and
communities; and
n Advocacy, awareness-raising and
information exchange.
It is notable that in Water for African Cities
programme Phase II, programme development and
implementation strategy is multi-faceted:
i) A top-down approach geared to encouraging
and supporting national governments in
the development of policies, regulations and
legal frameworks and equipping them with
institutional and management capacity to
facilitate decentralisation of decision-making
power to local communities. In addition, UN-
HABITAT will promote political awareness
at the regional level, and continue to develop
and nurture networks for regional water and
sanitation professionals to promote overall
policy coordination.
ii) A bottom-up approach geared to building
local authority capacity and strengthening
institutions through training programmes
and other schemes, empowering them to keep
abreast of rapid urban development, as well as
creating an enabling environment for effective
water supply and sanitation provision, improved
drainage services, etc.
Analysis of the Water for African Cities
Programme Phase II Approach
Pro-poor investment and financing mechanisms:
Implementation of approaches (i) and (ii) mentioned
above focuses the Water for African Cities Programme
Phase II project on enhancing a pro-poor urban water
and sanitation approach that stimulates follow-up
investment, by providing low-income communities
with appropriate pre-investment capacity-building to
support implementation of community projects, and
micro-credit facilities to finance programmes that
improve their livelihoods. With this approach the
Water for African Cities Programme Phase II seeks
to exert direct influence on policy, regulatory and
40 Review of existing concepts of water governance
institutional arrangements with a view to leveraging
additional investment both at the national level and
in participating cities. At the individual level, this
pro-poor investment approach targets issues affecting
specific groups (e.g., women and youth) and seeks to
integrate them into the programme implementation
Participatory approach:
Te participatory approach to decision-making in
the Water for African Cities Programme Phase II will
encourage the development of local initiatives to solve
local problems through collective empowerment,
and through stimulation of regional and city-specific
scaling up of good practices. To a large extent, Water
for African Cities Phase II recognises the role of civil
society and their organizing principles, alongside
other demands within participating cities. Tis is a
useful approach for the sustainability of water supply
and sanitation interventions.
Multi-dimensional components:
Te thematic priority areas of the Water for African
Cities Programme Phase II are multi-dimensional,
with cross-cutting component activities which will
increase effectiveness of service delivery and help
Achievements of Water for African Cities Phase I:
n A substantial degree of national and international awareness and exposure of the activities of the Water for
African Cities Programme, including information exchange between the African cities;
n Improved awareness of the importance of better water management, particularly through Water Demand
n Improved quality and quantity of information and communication material and sector publications;
n Water saved by better-of consumers could be channelled to consumers in poorer neighbourhoods.
Limitations of the Water for African Cities Programme Phase I:
n The project lacked a pro-poor focus, as the primary emphasis was on Water Demand Management which,
as a strategy, is not practical in low-income areas. Demand management encompasses a variety of strategies and
tools that seek to optimise the productive benefts obtained from a limited supply of water, such as adjusting
irrigation patterns to reduce water use; promoting the re-use of treated wastewater and lesser quality water,
or adjusting the nature of a task to use less water. Ultimately, demand management seeks to change people's
behaviour in favour of more efcient, equitable and sustainable water use. Most urban poor communities have
only very limited, if any, access to water;
n Absence of governance structures to manage water saved from better-of areas for use by the poor;
n The focus on sanitation was minimal
Additional areas of focus from evaluation of Water for African Cities Programme Phase I.
n Pro-poor investments in urban water supply through innovative public-private-NGO partnerships;
n Promotion of demand-responsive strategies to give more infuence to the urban poor;
n Sanitation: on-site-sanitation, low-cost sewerage, waste water re-use, etc.
n Rainwater harvesting, bringing in experience from other regions, e.g. Asia.
Source UN-HABITAT, 2005
Box 6 :
Evaluation results of the Water for African
Cities Programme Phase I
41 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
participating cities to attain the water and sanitation
target of the Millennium Development Goals. Tis
approach effectively recognizes that that addressing
the water and sanitation needs of the urban poor
transcends aggregate demand management. It also
cuts across all the management and leadership
systems that affect decision-making, delivery
system design and institutional linkages between
households, communities, local authorities, utilities,
regulatory bodies, etc.
Te relevance of a pro-poor urban water and
sanitation governance framework for the Water for
African Cities Programme Phase II (WAC II)
Pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance is
relevant to the Water for African Cities Programme
in seven distinct respects:
n Recognition of the needs, demands and bot-
tlenecks existing in the provision of water and
sanitation services to the urban poor;
n Incorporating the inputs of stakeholders in set-
ting standards for delivery systems;
n Setting up management systems to enhance
financial sustainability, e.g., through participa-
tory budgeting and efficiency improvements;
n Building appropriate linkages between various
stakeholders to ensure appropriate contractual
arrangements, regulatory frameworks, technical
viability, financial support systems, etc.;
n Sharing of experiences, i.e., ensuring up-scaling
and replicability;
n Promoting and building monitoring and evalu-
ation systems;
n Promoting political buy-in through advocacy
and awareness raising programmes.
Understanding of governance is premised on the fact
that methods that have been adopted (formally and
informally) by societies for the purpose of reaching
collective decisions are culture-dependent. Terefore,
governance structures are composed of a series of
intricate details, many of which are interdependent
and local-specific. Governance is seen here as avenues
or processes for achieving social goals - in this case,
extending water supply and sanitation services to
increasing numbers of poor urban dwellers.
4.1. 3. The Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF)
Te world's slums are growing; in developing
countries, slum dwellers account for 43 per cent of
the population, in contrast to about six per cent in
more developed regions. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
the proportion of urban residents in slums is the
highest at 71.9 per cent compared to 24.1 per cent
in Oceania, 33.1 per cent in Western Asia, 31.9 per
cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, 28.2 per
cent in North Africa and 28 per cent in South East
Asia (UN-HABITAT, 2003).
Te establishment of the Slum Upgrading Facility
by UN-HABITAT was in response to four distinct
but related trends:
n To address the 'finance gap' in slum upgrading
as a contribution to wider, worldwide efforts
to identify new sources of finance, considering
that public and private investment combined
with official development assistance only meet
five to 10 per cent of the financing required for
improvements in housing and basic services in
Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and South East
n To respond to, and make better use of, the de-
centralisation of public administration (from
central government departments to local au-
thorities), given that the degree to which central
government empowers local authorities has di-
rect impact on the latter's ability to engage with
community organisations and the private sector
to plan, manage, and finance the delivery of ba-
sic services and other infrastructure.
n To design, field-test and scale-up financial in-
struments that will capture domestic capital by
exploiting the liberalisation of domestic finan-
cial services.
n To increase the degree of community and sav-
ings mobilisation in slums through innovative
schemes in connection with parallel innovation
in domestic financial services, local capital mar-
kets, and local authorities.
In order to establish global working relations and
strengthen institutional links, and in collaboration
with the Cities Alliance and the Municipal
42 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Finance task force, the Slum Upgrading Facility
shares information on financing mechanisms for
municipalities in developing countries with various
relevant entities: bilateral and multilateral financial
institutions (including USAID and the World
Bank Group); development partners (slum dwellers,
local authorities, central government) and financial
partners (micro-finance institutions, banks, capital
In order to identify local partners, learn from and
assess existing financial mechanisms and partnership
arrangements, the Slum Upgrading Facility has
undertaken scoping missions to 10 countries - Kenya,
Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Ghana, and Senegal in
Africa; Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in South Asia; and
Cambodia and Indonesia in South East Asia. Tese
scoping missions clearly showed that governments,
communities and domestic financial services are
agreed on the need for financing improvements in
housing and basic services in slums (including water
supply and sanitation) by involving indigenous
banks and local capital markets, so long as there is
an acceptable notion of risk.
In all 10 countries under review, the perceived risks
for the private sector and capital markets were locally
considered to be too high, while the capacity of local
actors varied greatly:
n some governments are strong but the urban
poor are not well organised and capital markets
are generally weak;
n some communities are mobilised and the bank-
ing institutions and capital markets are well
poised to structure instruments for financing
and upgrading initiatives, but local governments
lack proper governance and the autonomy to
support community-led efforts and domestic
financial institutions; and
n some local authorities and urban poor move-
ments are working in partnership on a range
of upgrading actions, but private sector banks,
financial intermediaries and local capital mar-
kets are weak if at all existent.
Te Slum Upgrading Facility uses a matrix of
selection criteria to strengthen its own support
services as well as the capacities of local actors and
institutions (including the urban poor and local
authorities), and to stimulate innovation in domestic
capital markets. In addition, the country strategy
papers for the pilot countries provide the Slum
Upgrading Facility with details of ongoing local
initiatives, which helps the Facility to identify the
needs for technical assistance and seed capital and
any support that may be required.
At Visakapatnam, a DFID-funded slum-upgrading
programme has had a major impact on access to
basic services. Te pilot Slum Networking Project
in Ahmedabad sought to develop a new model
for providing services in low-income settlements,
involving a partnership between municipal
authorities, the private sector, local communities
and non-governmental organizations. Although
difficulties have led to the withdrawal of the private
sector partner, the municipal authorities still
hope that the programme can expand to reach all
'slums'. In Cebu, a wide range of partnerships has
been established between municipal agencies, local
non-governmental organizations and grassroots
organisations to provide social services, and these
have improved provision of primary health care as
well as communal water and sanitation facilities.
Under the UN-HABITAT global initiative Cities
Without Slums (CWS), the Kenya Slum Upgrading
Programme (KENSUP), has been established as
a collaborative effort between the Government
of Kenya and UN-HABITAT. Te objective is to
improve the livelihoods of people living and working
in Kenya's urban slums. Tree pilot urban centres
have been selected – Nairobi, Kisumu and Mavoko
- to provide a framework that can sustain long-term,
nationwide slum upgrading.
As part of its approach, the Kenya Slum Upgrading
Programme seeks to harness political will,
strengthen slum-dweller organisations, and promote
all-inclusive processes based on consensus-building
and partnerships. In both Kisumu and Nairobi, a
preliminary situation analysis of the identified pilot
43 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
slums has been undertaken, with a focus on land
tenure issues, housing, infrastructure, social services
and livelihoods. Part of this analysis also focused on
community values and perceptions and assessed the
effectiveness of previous and on-going upgrading
initiatives in the selected areas. An analysis of the
institutional framework and policy environment has
also been undertaken, particularly in the selected
slum areas of Kisumu, to provide insights into the
factors at play and their relative influence on current
conditions in the slums.
At the national level, KENSUP fits clearly in the
strategic framework laid out in the country's Poverty
Reduction Strategy Plan, while at the international
level, it is a clear demonstration of the Kenya
government's commitment to the Habitat agenda and
the Millennium Development Goal of improving
the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the
year 2020.
Pro-poor strategies geared towards improving water
supply and sanitation services to the urban poor
that are integrated in the Kenya Slum Upgrading
Programme include:
n promoting pro-poor income-generating activi-
ties; and
n promoting citizen participation, engagement
and empowerment through active participation
of stakeholders including Community Based
Organisations, Non-Governmental Organiza-
tions, the public and private sectors, develop-
ment partners, etc.
It is important to note that in Nairobi, the Kenya Slum
Upgrading Programme is part of the UN-HABITAT
Water for African Cities Programme Phase II that
promotes pro-poor water and sanitation governance,
and creates a conducive environment for follow-up
investments by supporting and improvements to
water and sanitation infrastructure for better service
delivery and improved coverage within the pilot area
of Soweto East in Nairobi's Kibera slums.
In particular, the Kenya Slum Upgrading
Programme is designed to be 'demand-driven', with
outcomes being determined by the community
itself. Te focus by Un-HABITAT on infrastructure
improvements to facilitate better provision of basic
needs (as opposed to designing houses) in itself is a
move towards addressing the more immediate need
to improve the quality of life for thousands of poor
urban dwellers.
Slum Upgrading Facility Limitations
and Pitfalls: – The Kenya Slum
Upgrading Programme (KENSUP)
a) Tere is no official attempt to establish a national
system for slum upgrading, and consequently
no existing official framework within which
communities can initiate any upgrading procedures
– making for a slow process and a questionable degree
of community involvement in decision-making. As
a result, the immediate problems facing these poor
communities (security of tenure, access to adequate
safe water and sanitation) remain unaddressed.
b) Te institutional framework for the Kenya Slum
Upgrading Programme is yet to be established.
Although Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme has
mapped and identified the structures and residents in
Soweto East, the design, planning and coordination
of project activities are handled by government
ministries and UN-HABITAT, without adequate
community participation in the development of
slum upgrading policies.
As a result, Soweto East
residents seem to lack a real voice in the project, as
existing community representation mechanisms are
not designed to make them equal partners in the
development process (localised participation).
c) Te Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme has not
addressed the relationships between structure-owner
and tenant and how the lack of security of tenure
will be resolved. Owners of the existing structures
might be encouraged to increase rents as a result of
improved conditions once overall slum upgrading is
72 COHRE, June 2006. Listening to the Poor: Housing rights in Kenya. COHRE Fact-fnding Mission to Nairobi, Kenya.
Final report, June 2006.
44 Review of existing concepts of water governance
4.1.4. The Gender Mainstreaming Unit
Tis is a partnership between UN-HABITAT and
the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA), which was
established in 2005 with the following objectives:
n Develop a gender mainstreaming strategy and op-
erational action plans for the overall UN-
HABITAT water and sanitation programme.
n Facilitate the "genderisation" of water and sanita-
tion utilities through development of gender-
sensitive norms and standards, and provide sup-
port for enhanced female participation in water
and sanitation utilities.
n Identify areas for capacity development and en-
hancement; and
nInform and influence national economic develop-
ment policies and
sector reforms to make them more gender-
UN bodies are mandated to fulfil the demand for
gender mainstreaming in all activities within their
respective remits. Te Gender Mainstreaming
Strategy Initiative (GMSI) is an attempt to
mainstream gender into the Un-Habitat water and
sanitation programme. Te tacit indignities and
deprivations visited upon poor women due to lack of
proper and adequate sanitation facilities came to the
fore at the CSD 13 meeting in New York, when their
unheard voices were presented at a session organised
by UN-HABITAT.
As part of its pro-poor approach, the Gender
Mainstreaming Strategy Initiative uses a Rapid
Gender Assessment tool developed by the Gender
and Water Alliance and the Water for African Cities
Programme to collect preliminary baseline data
on various thematic areas in the cities where the
programme operates. Gender and Water Alliance
members and local stakeholders have also engaged
in rapid gender institutional assessments of their
respective water and sanitation utilities – both public
and private. A gender situational analysis in slum or
informal settlements assesses the degree of access
to safe and affordable water and sanitation facilities
73 During the 13th session of the Commission on Sustainable Development - CSD-13 in New York, UN-HABITAT organized a
side event to call attention to the Unheard Voices of Women in discussions on the provision and improvement of access to clean
water and sanitation facilities and services.
and services (particularly for the poor), together
with the existence of formal and informal providers
of these services, as well as the living and working
conditions of women, men, girls and boys in low-
income communities.
Analysis of the data from this assessment has led to
the development of a gender mainstreaming strategy
for the Water for African Cities Programme Phase II
in each city. As a result, gender equity and pro-poor
action plans are integrated into project design and
Tis strategy is important in gender mainstreaming
since it is participatory and, therefore, grounded in
the knowledge and networks of local stakeholders.
However, the challenge for UN-HABITAT and the
Gender and Water Alliance is not only their ability
to actually integrate gender and pro-poor analysis in
the Water for African Cities programme Phase II;
it will also lie in their ability to determine the best
way of promoting institutional changes that will
engage female and male slum dwellers in decision-
making processes for sustainable provision of water
and sanitation services.
Evidence of gender mainstreaming in current
programmes can be found in the approaches adopted
in the Water for Asian Cities Programme. Under this
scheme, demonstration projects on innovative public-
private-NGO partnerships based on consultation,
appropriate technology choice, and new partnerships
are being developed. In partnership with Mahila
Chetna Manch, a Non-Governmental Organization
based in Bhopal, a gender mainstreaming strategy
for water supply and sanitation has been developed
through rapid gender assessment of four project cities,
which has facilitated development of action plans for
both capacity building and project implementation
in the cities of Madhya Pradesh.
45 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
4.2. Evaluation of Existing Pro-poor Urban
Water and Sanitation Governance Concepts
and Framework
4. 2.1. The Joint UN-HABITAT/World
Bank Water Governance Performance
Assessment Tool (GPT) – Jim Lamb
Te Governance Performance Tool was developed
jointly by the World Bank and UN-HABITAT to
assess the quality of governance for the delivery of
water and sanitation services to urban settlements
in developing countries, and it focuses on
improvements to services for unserved and poor
urban communities.
Why the focus on municipalities?
Te rationale for this tool is an understanding
that conventional assessments of local governance
generally focus on government bodies and civil
society groups, with little consideration for
individuals, households and unplanned settlements.
Te Governance Performance Tool also recognises
that these un-served groups may not necessarily
have any linkages that allow interaction with local
As it assesses the water and sanitation governance
regimes at work in a municipality, the Governance
Performance Tool provides an impartial means of
identifying areas for improvement and for measuring
improvement over time. Te tool also hopefully
identifies the governance arrangements that are in
place and determines whether they are effective in
delivering water and sanitation services to all groups,
and the poorer communities in particular.
Although it targets municipalities, the Governance
Performance Tool recognises that water supply and
sanitation governance exists within a larger framework
of State governance, and seeks to determine whether
national or regional water resource governance
issues influence, or are influenced by, local water
governance regimes.
The GPT approach: Strengths
and weaknesses
Strengths of the World Bank Governance
Performance Tool:
n A way of monitoring Millennium Development
Goals at the local level: If effective water gov-
ernance is considered the pathway to achiev-
ing Millennium Development Goals (and the
sanitation goal agreed at WSSD), the proposed
Governance Performance Tool is essential in
monitoring progress in those urban communi-
ties where the problems affecting delivery of wa-
ter supply and sanitation services are a result of
governance deficiencies.
n Te tool is context-specific: Te Governance
Performance Tool accommodates the socio-cul-
tural perceptions of the communities in a given
municipality to determine which principles of
water governance can deliver the best possible
results. Tis is a step towards recognizing a giv-
en community as an important stakeholder in
the social decision-making structures, which in
turn stimulates participation and benefit-shar-
ing. Solutions will also be specific to each con-
text and in accordance with existing dynamics.
n Tis tool shifts attention away from national
governance assessment to the local level where a
majority of the urban poor remain inadequately
served. Municipalities are best placed to lead the
planning for capital expenditure on land and
services (infrastructure such as roads, drainage,
sanitation and water supply) as required for the
development of sustainable neighbourhoods.
If municipalities receive the required degree of
government support to facilitate implementa-
tion, the proposed Governance Performance
Tool will facilitate better water supply and sani-
tation services to the urban poor - given that the
degree to which central government empowers
local authorities impacts directly on the latter's
ability to engage with community organisations
and the private sector to plan, manage, and fi-
nance the delivery of basic services and other
74 UN-HABITAT, 2006. Slum Upgrading Facility (SUF) Handbook, Volume 1, June 2006, Vancouver.
46 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Te Limitations of the World Bank Governance
Performance Tool:
n Te proposed Governance Performance Tool
does not take into consideration the role of exist-
ing technical gaps and constraints. For instance,
where does the line lie between the influence
of governance failures in existing systems, and
those failures of a technical nature?
n Te suggested appraisal procedures are tailored
to match local circumstances and the values of
the specific community within a municipality,
making the tool unsuitable for direct compari-
sons between elements of governance in other
n Te Governance Performance Tool does not
provide guidelines for mapping the poor within
the municipalities, since even in a single mu-
nicipality a variety of governance regimes are at
n Te criteria for selecting stakeholders and the
'assurance panel' are not defined. Te tool does
not provide any means of ensuring that those
stakeholder panels set up for consultation will
be representative.
n Te tool assesses governance before defining it
– what guiding principles for what good /effec-
tive type of governance are used when assessing
existing structures?
n Although it involves a situational overview of
existing water supply and sanitation structures,
this tool assumes that urban poor areas have a
governance structure already in place for water
supply and sanitation. However, the unplanned
settlements where a majority of the urban poor
reside are served not by formal utilities, but by
small-scale, independent providers. In Nairobi's
informal settlements, these providers are not un-
der any set operational rules or obligations, and
Approach Activities Intended results
Mapping existing governance regime through
investigation of:
n interactions between service providers and
n unserved groups and the roles and
efectiveness of existing institutions
n efectiveness of the management/leadership
roles and responsibilities
n the needs and expectations of poor
n identify unserved groups
n identify problems afecting water
supply and sanitation service
provision to all groups
n identify institutional and
management gaps in efective
delivery of services
n identify the communities' attributes of
efective governance
n measure the current institutions'
understanding of efective governance
n investigate the degree of interaction between
the communities and the institutions
Monitoring and
Monitor governance reform processes
47 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
have neither the necessary accountability mech-
anisms nor the facility for consumer voice.
n Te existing legal and municipal policies af-
fecting water supply and sanitation provision
among the urban poor are not articulated in the
Governance Performance Tool. Most develop-
ing countries (particularly in the Sub-Saharan
region) have no sanitation policies of the holis-
tic type required to facilitate water supply and
sanitation provision to low-income settlements.
As emphasised in a WSP-AF report (Piers Cross
and Alain Morel, 2005), lack of clear policies
and effective programmes for meeting the needs
of the poor have resulted in the rapid expansion
and densification of the slum areas where many
residents live in absolute poverty.
n Tis Governance Performance Tool assumes
that communities within municipalities are ho-
mogeneous, i.e., share the same social and eco-
nomic values. However, in view of internal and
external migration flows into urban areas and
the fast growth of 'slums' which feature ethnic
variety, changes in social dynamics can be ex-
pected. At the same time, the Governance Per-
formance Tool assumes that municipalities will
always be host to well-developed and identifiable
households, spaces and institutional structures;
yet most informal settlements in developing
countries are quite unstructured and often with-
out defined water supply and sanitation service
provision networks. For instance, the Kibera
informal settlement is home to almost 700,000
people from different ethnic backgrounds living
in 12 villages; therefore social dynamics (values,
norms, etc.) will vary from village to village, at
the very least.
n Given that women tend to be poorly represented
in most municipal and town institutions, the
Governance Performance Tool is likely to have
a gender imbalance. We have noted in our ear-
lier discussion that any governance framework
should ensure full participation of women (and
young people); it is not clear how the Govern-
ance Performance Tool can ensure this. But
then distorted representation of 'groups' has a
huge impact on decision-making processes and
on the livelihoods of these members of the com-
munity, and therefore will affect the effective-
ness of governance structures at this level.
4. 2. 2. The UN-HABITAT Pro-poor urban
water and sanitation governance
framework - David Satterthwaite
and Gordon McGranahan
'Urban water and sanitation governance covers
the full range of arrangements through which
governments and other actors work together
to develop and manage water and sanitation
systems.' (Satterthwaite and McGranahan,
Satterthwaite and McGranahan's starting point is
that the arrangements mentioned in the definition
above often fail the urban poor, who are at a
disadvantage in both the market and the public policy
arena, and often end up using water and sanitation
systems that are unhealthy and even illegal. Existing
arrangements also often fail the more affluent urban
dwellers, who receive intermittent or otherwise
poor-quality services despite their economic and
political advantages. One of the basic arguments
in Satterthwaite and McGranahan's framework is
that the principles and governance tools that are
important in getting private providers to improve
provision to the urban poor are very similar to those
needed to improve public provision; consequently,
local governance is critical to getting the best out of
private as well as public providers.
With regard to pro-poor strategies for achieving
Millennium Development Goals, the two authors
argue that the water and sanitation target is intended
to place deprived households at the centre of a
new water and sanitation agenda, which not only
challenges the pro-poor credentials of ongoing reform
efforts, but also demands a more coherent and focused
approach to the water and sanitation problems of the
poor. From a governance perspective, the significant
role of international support to improved water and
sanitation provision for low-income urban residents
is seen as a major challenge, namely, preventing
48 Review of existing concepts of water governance
vested interests (many of which are international)
from dominating local water sectors.
Satterthwaite's proposed pro-poor urban water and
sanitation governance
Te main rationale behind this paper and proposed
framework is the failure of current sector-based
models of good governance. Many good examples
of successful approaches are available, though, most
of which share certain common denominators, as
n Where several interventions to improve govern-
ance systems are implemented together;
n Where tripartite negotiations are undertaken
between the unserved, the service provider and
the local government;
n Where partnerships have been made between
small public utilities, small private utilities and
community groups
Tis framework proposes that water and sanitation
service providers must be more accountable to the
poor; the two authors emphasise that accountability,
and therefore, any degree of improvement, is directly
related to the level of influence the poor can bring
to bear. Both private and public utilities must also
review their policies with such accountability in
mind. A clear focus for strategies is to increase the
voice of the poor to make these demands. It is a
fact that where communities are better organised
in terms of general livelihood development as well
as shelter legality and security, they are in a better
position to enter into effective negotiation. Indeed,
the State is more responsive to these demands if
it takes a progressive approach to democracy and
decentralisation. Tese factors of "good governance"
have yielded effective approaches in Latin America.
In parallel to government efforts to provide an
enabling environment for good water governance,
service providers (public or private), must be more
responsive to the urban poor. In most cases, larger
scale service providers have a contract with the State,
their revenues being gained from both a service fee
and any revenue they can collect from water sales. As
for smaller scale vendors, they derive revenues from
water sales only. Larger scale providers are therefore
less likely to be ready to provide for the poor,
considering current institutional arrangements.
Service providers are not exempt from corrupt
practices, but often these are most keenly felt by the
poor. Most corruption in water utilities can usually
be traced to low-level local utility staff, who demand
bribes to "reduce" connection costs or to restore
supplies that have been cut off for non payment.
High-level corruption is also apparent, especially in
the process of awarding tenders.
Satterthwaite and McGranahan argue that perhaps
the area that shows greatest promise for promoting
pro-poor governance approaches is the promotion
of government support for community-driven
processes. Good examples that have led to increased
government involvement, particularly in the areas
of scale-up and replication, have been those where
community funded pilot and demonstration schemes
have shown government that a particular solution is
more cost effective. Such schemes have:
n Linked shelter and slum upgrading to water and
sanitation interventions;
n Involved communities in both initial assessment
of demand and ex-post evaluation;
n Featured co-financing through community and
government funding;
n Integrated livelihood development with water
and sanitation interventions.
Regulators have much to do to promote pro-poor
approaches. Most of them have no specific policies
for providing water and sanitation services to poor
un-served areas and do not consider the poor when
drawing up private sector management contracts and
concessions. Tey do not encourage service providers
to associate economic, efficient and viable operations
with serving the poor. In most cases, regulators
do not consider major barriers to connection
with networked systems, such as high connection
costs. Another important consideration, against a
background of widespread utility privatisation is
that public utilities that served the poor well tend to
continue to do so after privatisation.
49 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Te framework proposed by Satterthwaite and
McGranahan has some limitations:
n It pays little attention to either the role of small-
scale vendors or how their relationship with
larger scale private enterprises can lead to poten-
tial win-win situations.
n It needs a clearer definition of the role of regula-
tors in providing the desirable policy environ-
n Many of the cross-cutting issues are duplicated
in the framework.
In this framework, the majority of the issues that
affect access to water and sanitation services by the
urban poor are well articulated and could provide
the basis for expanding the framework further.
Te framework could do with some additional
components, such as identifying the poor, on top of
remedying the limitations mentioned above. Placing
as it does the influence of the poor (who make up
most or all of the un-served or inadequately served)
at its core, the framework provides a useful corrective
to the tendency for other stakeholders in the water
sector to claim that their interests coincide with those
of poor groups. Other questions that are central to
pro-poor governance of water and sanitation include
how the poor can increase their political voice vis-à-
vis the State, or increase their consumer power vis-à-
vis providers, and how this framework can be fitted
to serve the interests of low-income groups.
Conclusions on the UN-HABITAT
approach: Strengths and Challenges
From the above discussions, it is clear that UN-
HABITAT has played a significant role in
the development of and, to a large extent, the
implementation of specific pro-poor water supply
and sanitation interventions geared towards
improving access and provision of both water and
sanitation services for the urban poor. Tis review
indicates that there is a strong pro-poor focus in the
implementation of UN-HABITAT's projects and
programmes, for instance, building the capacities
of the communities. In both the Lake Victoria
75 Gordon McGranahan and David Satterthwaite. Discussion paper on pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance.
Quoted in UN-HABITAT (2003) Water and Sanitation in the World's Cities: Local Action for Global Goals, Earthscan,
Water and Sanitation Initiative and the Kenya
Slum Upgrading Programme, UN-HABITAT has
involved local communities in project design and
Using community-based management models (as with
the sanitation user groups of the Vacutug exhausters
in Kibera, Nairobi) enables local communities to
take responsibility for the management, operations
and maintenance of the facilities. However, in order
to enhance community-participation in promoting
water supply and sanitation services among the
urban poor, UN-HABITAT should consider helping
communities to set up effective intermediaries in the
form of community associations (for both water and
sanitation, particularly in informal settlements where
small-scale water supply and sanitation providers
are not regulated), in order to provide forums for
community/consumer voice, and to address issues
such as water quality, tariff regulation, user charges,
operation and maintenance, etc.
As highlighted in the UN-HABITAT (2006)
Global Report,
it is clear that proper water and
sanitation provision is not just about infrastructure,
but also includes local capacities to make appropriate
technological and institutional choices that facilitate
'smart partnerships', so that where conventional
means are not effective, innovative alternatives
can be implemented. For instance, in the Water
for Asian Cities programme (launched in 2003)
and as part of a collaborative framework (between
Timi Municipality, the Centre for Integrated
Urban development (CIUD) and Water Aid Nepal),
pro-poor urban water and sanitation governance,
mapping of poor communities, rapid gender
assessment, and Initial Environmental Examination
have resulted in the development of pro-poor urban
water and sanitation governance tools which are
going to be replicated in the Water for African Cities
Programme. Focus has been placed on enhancing
capacity at city, country and regional levels, and on
the creation of an enabling environment for new
investments to be channelled to marginalised poor
76 UN-Habitat, 2006. 'Meeting Development Goals in Small Urban Centres' pp245
50 Review of existing concepts of water governance
At the same time, policy reform is an important
mechanism that improves water supply and
sanitation provision, and related policy options and
management models should form the basis for access
to and provision of basic services. UN-HABITAT
acknowledges that the main challenge lies in turning
good policies into a framework that can be used to
assess governance at various stages of the reform
In addition, important questions have been addressed
in concept papers including how to reconcile the
governance perspectives of different stakeholders,
developing workable field strategies to secure good
governance, identifying appropriate intervention
points, and the need for robust diagnostic tools with
specific relevance to water governance.
51 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Data recorded by the Organisation for Economic
Development's Development Assistance Committee
(OECD DAC) show that since 2000, the proportion
of combined multilateral (e.g., World Bank,
European Commission) and bilateral (direct, country
to country) aid devoted to water and sanitation has
dropped from six to five per cent of total aid. Among
the G7, the world's most powerful economies, the
drop was even more dramatic, with bilateral aid for
water and sanitation falling from seven per cent to
under four per cent, while the UK's share of bilateral
aid during that period dropped from 3.8 per cent to
0.86 per cent.
At the same time, a huge impediment to delivery of
effective water and sanitation services to the world's
poorest is tied aid, which is conditional on recipient
countries spending all or part of the aid package
on goods and services from the donor country.
According to the United Nations Development
Programme's 2005 Human Development Report,
tied aid costs developing countries an estimated 20
per cent above the cost of buying these goods and
services on the open market, which amounts globally
to an annual USD 5bn-7bn tax on aid. Tied aid costs
Africa alone USD 1.6 billion a year.
However, a growing acceptance of Poverty
Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in recent years
has created an opportunity for more coordinated
development assistance as well as targeted poverty
reduction in a way that reflects the demands and
needs of individual countries. Current estimates for
achieving the Millennium Development Goals for
water and sanitation range from USD 7.5 billion to
USD 70 billion annually.
Unfortunately, between
2000 and 2004, the bulk of the water and sanitation
aid (65 per cent) went to middle-income countries.
Low-income countries were allocated only 34 per
cent, with the least developed receiving a mere 17
77 See, http://www.wateraid.org/documents/who_is_doing_their_bit__wwd_report_06_1.pdf
78 Fonseca, Catarina and Rachel Cardone, 2004.
per cent.
Given this situation, it is evident that existing water
sector finance and governance systems need to evolve
– both to adapt to the current environment, and to
create a new one where the water and sanitation
sector can attract the resources required – if it is to
yield the economic and poverty reduction benefits
that are so often associated with it. Tis would
include redefinition of donor and development
agencies' pro-poor policies so that water supply and
sanitation for the urban poor can be improved. It is,
therefore, important to provide an overview of some
of the current donor and development agencies'
water supply and sanitation pro-poor policies and
frameworks, with a view to identifying any gaps
which will then be examined in section 6.0.
5.1. The World Bank
One of the pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance frameworks proposed by the World
Bank is based on the notion that demands for
improvement need to come from the poor people
depending on the degree of influence
they have on service providers either directly or
through government. Tis framework focuses on the
relationship between the citizens as clients, service
providers, and the State, distinguishing two routes
of accountability: direct pressure on the service
provider for better services, and indirect pressure
through policy-makers and politicians.
Te World Bank's Water and Sanitation Programme,
Africa (WSP-AF), on the other hand, suggests the
following key entry points for pro-poor urban water
and sanitation governance strategies:
(i) Pro-poor tariffs and financing mechanisms for
service improvement;
79 The World Bank, 2004. World Development Report: Making services work for the poor.
5.0. Approaches & activities of other by donors and development
52 Review of existing concepts of water governance
(ii) Institutional arrangements to improve services
to the urban poor. WSP-AF argues that insti-
tutional and policy reform is needed to break
this stagnation cycle, by improving financial
and technical performance. Tese reforms have
brought the issue of services to the poor into
sharp focus;
(iii) Pro-poor transaction design (including reg-
ulation and monitoring);
(iv) Advocacy and communication regarding the
urban poor; and
(v) Consumer voice and civil society engagement.
Limitations of the framework:
n Te framework assumes that the poor have a
'voice' or channels for voicing their concerns di-
rectly to either the service provider or the State,
and that their needs and demands will be re-
sponded to.
n It fails to make explicit the means through which
the urban poor can influence policy change or
their inclusion in policy discussions and even-
tual decisions.
n No provision is made for co-option of various
local solutions from poor marginalised com-
munities into the broader, formal systems of the
water and sanitation providers
Since service providers are mainly market - driven,
one needs to consider the diverse motivations they
may have for responding to consumer demands and
establish appropriate response mechanisms.
Te World Development Report (World Bank,
2004), Making Services Work for the Poor',
recommends institutional changes that are apt to
strengthen relationships of accountability - between
policymakers, providers, and citizens - in order to
improve service delivery. Te report further argues
that where services have worked well for the poor,
the following steps had been taken:
n participation of all stakeholders;
n curtailing corruption;
n recognition that resources and their effective use
are inseparable;
n adoption of a comprehensive view of develop-
ment ; and
n strong external support to policy changes and
towards effective practical use of resources.
5.2. Official Development Assistance
According to a recent report on lessons for development
, water service and sanitation delivery is a
key element of the Millennium Development Goals
since the roles and responsibilities between public,
private and community sectors in water management
is a key governance issue which requires both the
internal development of appropriate institutional
arrangements and a diagnostic approach which
enables external interventions to remain context
specific in approach. For this reason, development
in the water sector has increasingly moved
away from physical infrastructure provision to
focus on management, institutions, regulation,
conservation and allocation of water as a scarce
resource. Tis "software" emphasis comes under
the broad umbrella of water governance. Australia's
experiences with Official Development Assistance
and water governance
, as well as other countries'
own experiences (in water reforms), provide the
main themes under which water governance can be
a) Drivers of change in water
regulatory systems
Urban water utilities often fail to provide adequate
water supplies to urban poor communities; as
a result, about 31 per cent and 57 per cent of the
urban population in Africa and Asia respectively are
not served by piped water supply (WHO/UNICEF,
2000). At the internal level, programs give priority
to freshwater provision for basic domestic uses,
although past performance of water infrastructure
projects has been affected by ambiguities in the
responsibility for maintenance as well as by access
problems. For instance, user-pays models have
implications for the rural and urban poor and
any programme intervention is effective only if it
80 ODA, Water Governance in Context: Lessons for development assistance, Overview report Vol. 1. See,
81 Australia is at the forefront of innovative water governance reform initiatives at a global level.
53 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
is responding to actual needs, as well as perceived
needs for change. It is important to understand
why and how change occurs in the way water is
used and managed. What drives water governance
change and reform in various contexts, therefore,
is an understanding of the requisite levels of policy
analysis, project design and project management
in order to address the underlying causes of water
problems for each situation or region.
Drivers of change in water governance include
physical and political pressures. Natural hydrological
and climatic factors, together with availability of
water storage, shape the ways in which water is used
and managed. Demographic change and associated
infrastructure requirements place pressure on water
resources and often trigger reform at the policy and
management levels. Ideological influences, economic
pressures and wider reform processes can also define
water sector reform in specific ways in particular
Terefore, understanding the contextual drivers
that lie behind water governance reform is crucial
for programme design, besides acting as a significant
restraining influence to ensure that reform is not
overly influenced by external factors, but rather
responds to endogenous potential and processes.
Where drivers of change (e.g., scarcity, conflict and
international water policies) are mainly external,
compatibility is likely to be low:
n For instance, scarcity among the urban poor
needs to be understood in relation to compe-
tition between agricultural, industrial and do-
mestic users, as well as environmental and social
objectives such as ecological sustainability and
equity. Scarcity in urban areas has been con-
structed relative to historic levels of consump-
tion, rather than a basic needs approach. Te
threat of future shortages has prompted a debate
over alternatives. In Sydney, this can be seen
with the proposal to construct a desalination
plant. Although demand management has been
a component of policy responses, the bulk of so-
lutions have been supply-based. Solutions range
from resettlement or denial of citizenship rights,
to asserting the need to build storage dams in
place of forests as "sponged" natural storage. In
this case, scarcity has been used to justify a wa-
ter governance regime that marginalises minor-
ity groups and has a poor basis in the science of
forest hydrology.
n Universally accepted principles and policies must
be tailored to the specific hydrologic, climatic,
political, economic and cultural contexts of each
country. Te 'model' approach, whereby experi-
ences or policies from one context are replicated
wholesale in another, invariably fails when the
nuances of each country (physical realities) and
nation (political context) are not taken into ac-
count. Where internationally endorsed models
have been implemented without due reference
to the dynamics of the context, initiatives have
been problematic and less inclined to improve
sustainability in the long-term.
b) Catchment management
frameworks and issues of scale
Relations between different scales (or levels)
of management are important when designing
appropriate frameworks. Appropriate scales of
management and intervention differ from one
context to another. Development assistance supports
institutional reform in catchment management at
different levels, therefore there is a pressing need to
link broad-scale and community level processes.
c) Public-private-community
roles and initiatives
Te emphasis here is on the appropriateness of different
public-private-community roles and responsibilities
in different contexts. Any intervention must engage
with these roles and responsibilities in order to plan
appropriate mixes of market-based, institutional and
participatory approaches in management and water
supply and sanitation provision. Tere is need for an
appropriate mix and linkage between roles, with the
knowledge that the social acceptability of this mix
and linkage may vary according to circumstances.
54 Review of existing concepts of water governance
Community-based management raises questions of
capacity, financial management and participation.
Long-term sustainability, together with improved
demand-driven services and infrastructure, has been
the major objective when involving communities in
the management of their water supply and sanitation
systems. Operations, maintenance and financial
sustainability have been the biggest challenges with
community-managed systems, followed closely by
those of an institutional and cultural nature.
d) Dealing with conflict and risk in water
supply and sanitation projects
An assessment should be made of risk management
and outcomes for different groups, with an emphasis
on adaptive frameworks; such assessment should
inherently be concerned with conflict mitigation,
understanding that a degree of (non-violent)
conflict is a normal part of social change and a
likely component of governance reform. Terefore,
programme design must be based on understanding
of risk from societal, rather than narrow project or
investment, perspectives.
Water governance reform can be seen either as a way
of mitigating conflict as an end in itself, or as a way
of reducing the material basis for conflict such as
emerging water scarcity. Water reforms themselves
can also be a cause of conflict, if processes are
not sensitive to the interests and concerns of key
stakeholders, or are perceived to be beholden
to a narrow set of interests. Understanding the
connections between conflict and water governance
reform is essential for effective intervention.
e) Equity implications of market and
property rights mechanisms: Gender,
poverty and indigenous dimensions
Equity implications of market-based approaches to
water in a number of cases should be considered. Te
gender, poverty and indigenous dimensions of water
regulation should be addressed with specific reference
to the enhanced roles of markets and changing
property regimes. Programmes must strike a balance
between efficiency, social equity and sustainability.
Tis aspect covers a key area in which tensions and
unforeseen impacts can be anticipated and mitigated
with proper awareness and appraisal.
Gaps in the Official Development Assistance
approach to providing financial support to water
supply and sanitation for the poor
n It is difficult to determine whether water
and sanitation commitments are specifically targeted
to the poor. It is of course possible, from a broad
perspective, to plot access data (as provided by the
Joint Monitoring Program (JMP)) against funding
flows and to determine whether these are targeted to
those areas lacking access.
n Access to sanitation lags behind water supply
to a considerable degree. See Figure 1 below showing
official development assistance commitments to
water supply and sanitation, as drawn from the JMP
and CRS databases. Pink and blue dots represent
access to sanitation and to water supply, respectively.
It must be stressed here that this analysis is not meant
to suggest any causality between amounts of funding
and access levels, as funding commitments do not
necessarily turn into financial flows and such flows
as may occur are not necessarily timely or efficient.
Rather, the diagram pinpoints where the needs are
and, by comparison, where official development
assistance flows over the past few years have been
directed. It would be useful for policymakers to
know whether funding in South Asia is targeted
at sanitation more than at water supply, given the
wide gap in access data between the two. Based on
the historical figures in Figure 2, one can assume
that Official Development Assistance commitments
continue to support water supply interventions over
sanitation activities.
55 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
Asistance flows to water, based on average
commitments, 1999-2003
n Official Development Assistance flows – both in
terms of commitments and disbursements - are
insufficient to bridge the financing gap at glo-
bal, regional, and country levels, if they are to
achieve Target 10.
n Even if official development assistance flows were
sufficient in quantity, it is not clear that the
quality is adequate. Tere is a lack of evidence
that flows consistently reach those countries
in greatest need; and even where funding does
reach the poorest countries, there still appears
to be a bias towards larger-scale infrastructure
solutions over basic water and sanitation needs.
n Other trends in development tend not to be cap-
tured in discussions of official development as-
sistance flows to the water supply and sanitation
sector. For example, trends such as strengthen-
ing core governance functions through budget-
82 Fonseca, Catarina and Rachel Cardone, 2004. "Will it cost the earth? An overview of cost estimates for achieving the water
and sanitation targets of the Millennium Development Goals". Well Briefng Note 9, WEDC, UK. Available at:http.www.lboro.
ary support and sector -wide approaches, as well
as thinking beyond these traditional sources of
finance to support more innovative alternatives,
may have a positive impact on the water sector
overall. As pointed out in a recent paper for the
UK Department for International Development
on the agency's contributions to Target 10:
given the major constraints facing the sector
(which relate predominantly to public admin-
istration and financial management) it may be
appropriate for donors to focus on improving
the overall governance framework in a country
to the point where things work well, rather than
continue to fund unsustainable projects and
programmes in an institutionally complex water
83 ERM, 2005. "Meeting the Millennium Development Target for Water and Sanitation." DFID, London
30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
% Access to Water Supply
North Africa
Far/East Asia
Latin America/Caribbean
South Asia
Sub-Saharan Africa
Figure 2: Access to water and sanitation compared with Ofcial Development
56 Review of existing concepts of water governance
5.3. The Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Te Asian Development Bank seeks to reduce
poverty through targeted assistance to improved
access to services, particularly for the poor. Te
understanding is that many of the Millennium
Development Goals cannot be achieved unless poor
people have access to equitable, effective, efficient,
and affordable basic services. In their efforts to
improve the efficiency and responsiveness of basic
services, many central governments in Asia have
transferred the responsibility for service delivery to
local governments, on top of a range of policies and
measures to improve responsiveness in delivery of
public services, particularly to the poor.
Te Pro-poor Urban Water Governance approach
adopted by the ADB is based on the 'Water for
All Policy'. Under this approach, water governance
improvement is brought about through two major
types of strategic policy actions: an enabling
environment; and a restructured institutional
framework, which integrates and coordinates all
activities and management instruments developed
and implemented through rational and informed
choices as explained in the points given below:
a) Creating a favourable, enabling environment for
reforms, including the basic laws, policies, and
regulations for developing and managing water
resources, which governments provide through
legislative and executive actions;
b) Restructuring the institutional framework to
ensure the integration and coordination of all
activities. Tis includes the roles of, and rela-
tionships among various agencies (at all levels
of the bureaucracy) involved in developing and
managing water resources. Among the strategic
policy actions to ensure an effective institution-
al framework are those related to the creation of
an apex or umbrella body as the central national
agency to coordinate planning of sub-sectors
and across sectors, including decentralisation,
river basin management, or such other regional
decentralized or devolved entities (including the
local government units in charge of water sup-
ply, sanitation and other, related activities).
c) Developing and implementing management in-
struments for effective water governance. Tese
include the tools and techniques for decision
makers to make rational and informed choices
between alternative courses of action to make
governance more effective. Tese choices should
be based on agreed policies, available resources
and environmental impacts as well as social and
economic consequences. Management instru-
ments may be grouped into distinct functions,
such as water resources assessment, communica-
tion and information systems, water allocation
and conflict resolution, legal instruments, and
economic instruments.
An ADB report, Water and Poverty Initiative, points
out that the single most important pro-poor water
governance intervention is for governments, non-
governmental organisations, and funding agencies
to put poverty reduction, in all its multi-dimensional
aspects, at the top of the development agenda. Te
report further argues that good governance requires
adequate data on water availability, the nature of
poverty, and the relevant water-related government,
non-governmental organizations, and private sector
As for governments, ADB suggests
that they should identify minimum data requirements
and ensure that such data is consistently collected,
analyzed and made public.
Te ADB concurs with bilateral agencies when it
suggests, as one of the ways forward, that governments
move away from providing services and instead play
the role of regulators, in the process untying the link
between tariffs and politics. Te legal and regulatory
systems must ensure that water service providers and
resource managers are held accountable by law for
their performance relative to prescribed standards.
Te ADB also draws attention to the gender
disparities that exist in water governance structures
and which pro-poor mechanisms must take into
account for the sake of equitable water supply and
sanitation provision (see details in Box 7 below).
Terefore, emphasis is placed on ensuring greater
equity through inclusion of a strong gender
84 See, The Water and Poverty Initiative: What we can learn What we Must do. At: http://www.adb.org/documents/Books/wa-
57 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
perspective, if good governance is to develop in
the water sector. Gender must be seen as a core
component of all water governance structures, as
this is the only way that the needs and capabilities
of the poor can be articulated, as women make up a
disproportionate number of the poor and generally
have different water and sanitation needs compared
to men. Although this is challenging, some positive
experiences can be reported from Gujarat (India),
Pakistan, Punjab and Nepal, where gender-responsive
water-user associations have contributed towards
better water governance.
In a study, 'Enhancing Governance for Sustainable
Development', conducted in Cambodia, the
Cambodia Development Resource Institute and
the ADB conclude that good governance is a major
cause for successful economic management in East
and South-East Asia. Te report points out that if
fully implemented, pro-poor governance reform
programmes could raise real income per head by 250
per cent between now and 2020.
However, the
report fails to provide details of how the proposed
pro-poor water governance reforms would work,
who must put in place which action-oriented
85 ADB, 2001. available at: http://www.adb.org/Documents/News/VRM/vrm_200102.asp
mechanisms, and for whom.
Some of the other problems that the ADB (2003)
identifies with regard to 'poor' water governance
include: corruption,
which is cited as arising
from bureaucratic systems; political interference,
particularly in projects and in operations; low
tariffs and lack of autonomy of utilities. Among the
solutions identified to address the above are:
n Transparent policies and independent regulators
n Tariff reform to put consumers in control
n Civil society involvement
Te limitations of the ADB approach to water supply
and sanitation provision
n Strategic policy reforms take time to develop
and must be adapted to rapidly changing en-
vironments. To be successful, a prudent, meas-
ured approach may be necessary, with countries
prioritizing proposed actions rather than trying
to change everything within the sector at once.
n Detailed information is lacking on how the
poor as stakeholders are to be involved in the
processes for the proposed changes, and what
86 While corruption undermines good governance, equally bad governance breeds corruption. This is not only because the
necessary controls on corrupt behaviour are lacking but also because when offcial policies do not have public support,
corruption thrives.
The ADB highlights water needs and their efects on people, which it sees as intricately woven throughout
the daily lives of poor communities, particularly women and children. (Women, as traditional providers of
water, are most afected by lack of access. Some spend their lives as water carriers — and do little else).
In Asia, gender is recognised as a key dimension of actions in favour of pro-poor water governance. Women and men
usually play very diferent roles in water and sanitation activities – especially in rural areas. Men usually dig the
latrine pit whereas it is most often the responsibility of the women and children to clean it. Therefore, sanitation
programmes ofer a natural entry point for gender approaches. Men are, in some instances, more concerned with
water for irrigation or livestock, and they traditionally have a greater role than women in public decision-making.
Because of these diferent roles and incentives, it is important to involve both women and men in demand-driven
water and sanitation programmes, where communities decide what type of systems they prefer and are willing to
While it is clear that the management of water resources and the delivery of water services are central to invest-
ments to reduce poverty, there is much to learn about how such investments can be more efective
Source: Available at:http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/ADB_Review/2003/vil35_1/governance.asp
Box 7 :
Asian Development Bank – Gender approaches
in pro-poor water governance
58 Review of existing concepts of water governance
pro-poor measures must be taken into account
in ensuring access to and sustainable provision
of water supply and sanitation among the urban
poor, both in small towns and at community
n At the same time, considering that water gov-
ernance is not merely limited to formal institu-
tions, the ADB proposal on the way forward
lacks emphasis on the role of other informal in-
stitutions through which the State and society
interact in the pursuit of common goals with re-
spect to rural communities and the peri-urban
poor. As pointed out by Cleaver et al. in the
Bradford Centre for International Development
report mentioned earlier, (water) resources are
shaped and mediated through 'mechanisms.'
Terefore the mechanisms through which water
and sanitation facilities are governed across all
levels must be understood.
5 .4. SIDA (Swedish International
Development Agency)
SIDA supports organisations in Tird World
countries in their efforts to improve urban water
and sanitation supply through capacity building,
institutional reforms and funding. Te main focus
is on improving service delivery to low-income
groups in urban and peri-urban areas, with a wider
recognition that the task of reducing poverty through
adequate provision of services rests not only with
partner countries and the development cooperation
funds and agencies, but also requires consistent and
coherent pro-poor policies at the international level
and in many areas such as trade, agriculture, research
and intellectual property rights.
Te SIDA framework for the promotion of improved
water supply, sanitation and hygiene recognises that
conditions vary widely across and within regions;
therefore, the framework provided in the water
supply and sanitation strategy is only a guide which
should be adjusted to suit specific conditions. Te
strategy focuses on the following areas:
87 Mechanisms are understood as arrangements which can be negotiated and shaped over time. Emphasis is on the fact that
mechanisms are not fxed
n Water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion
in urban and peri-urban slums.
n Water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion
in rural areas.
n Capacity building for industrial water and
wastewater management.
n Water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion
in emergency situations.
n Waste water in urban areas.
Tis strategy acknowledges that while poor
inhabitants of both rural and urban settings are
affected by problems related to inadequate water
supply and sanitation, the respective contexts raise
different challenges that need to be addressed
specifically. Tis is reflected in the distinctions made
in SIDA's priority areas for sector support, in which
emphasis is laid on:
n Interventions oriented towards improving water
supply and sanitation services for the poor, with
additional emphasis on servicing the needs of
the most vulnerable groups, such as people liv-
ing with HIV/AIDS and households headed by
n Development of water supply and sanitation
technology options that are appropriate, adapt-
able and affordable within a variety of changing
spatial and socio-economic conditions.
n Cost recovery systems that ensure sustainable
yet affordable services. Where necessary, this
may require forms of cross-subsidisation in fa-
vour of the poor;
n Interventions that contribute, where possible, to
the enhancement of livelihood opportunities,
especially for the more impoverished and mar-
ginalised users; and
n Integration of water supply and sanitation sector
programmes with national poverty reduction
In its approach, SIDA stresses the importance of
participatory methods in planning, design and
implementation, thereby ensuring the involvement
of, and endorsement by, the respective users in
planning and implementation, which is crucial
for sustainability and for finding appropriate
59 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
technical, financial and institutional solutions. In
relation to this, the Swedish agency also emphasises
that information and education are important
components in any dialogue with users.
Gaps in the SIDA Strategy for
improved water supply and
sanitation for the urban poor
It is important to point out that the SIDA strategy
does not explicitly deal with management of solid
waste other than sewage sludge, although this is a
very significant aspect of urban sanitation in low-
income urban settlements since health problems
arising from wider sanitation issues have long been
identified as a critical contributing factor to poverty.
Sanitation, in the SIDA strategy, therefore, is meant
to encompass on-site solutions, collection and
treatment of wastewater, as well as sewage sludge
5.5. DANIDA (Danish International
Development Agency)
Te contribution by Danida to the poverty debate
goes back to the last 20 years and, in common with
other donors, the Danish agency has long recognised
the fundamental importance of participation and
empowerment of the underprivileged.
Te overall objective of assistance by Danida to the
water sector is sustainable poverty alleviation, with
six distinct objectives: improving health; reducing
the waste of time and drudgery associated with poor
levels of service; increasing the involvement of poor
people in development; supporting coordination
between water, sanitation and health; building
capacity; and striving for financial viability.
In recent years, Danish assistance at country level has
been designed with an increased focus on improved
water supply and sanitation services to the urban poor.
In addition to addressing poverty in urban areas,
support by Danida is intended to have a significant
impact on the achievement of the water target In
the Millennium Development Goals. Examples
of major water supply and sanitation projects and
programmes by Danida include Bangladesh, Benin,
Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Sri Lanka,
Uganda, Vietnam, and Zambia, among others. Box
8 summarises a Danida -supported water sector
programme in Vietnam, which is recognised as
having had a significant impact on the way country
has come to consider servicing the poor in low-
income urban communities.
60 Review of existing concepts of water governance
5.6. Conclusions on development agencies'
and donors' pro-poor approaches to
water supply and sanitation provision
As major providers of financial support to the water
sector, donors play an important role in shaping
sustainable development of the water and sanitation
sector and the delivery of water and sanitation
services, whether in urban, peri-urban, small town,
or rural areas. In this regard, institutions such as
development banks and other multilateral and
bilateral financing entities can help by encouraging
countries to choose governance policies that address
economic, environmental and social water issues in
an integrated and holistic manner.
Such encouragement can take the form of intellectual
sharing, institutional capacity building, and even
financial support for appropriate institutions. Te
encouragement should not, however, be short-term
because, as experience demonstrates, it takes a
long time for policies to be implemented and their
benefits to be felt. It is in the long term that fruitful
adjustment to local realities will occur.
Although Danida emphasises the need to use a
range of development instruments to achieve a
balance of service delivery against policy influence,
it is important to point out that projects are often
implemented with a high degree of external control
and management.
In Vietnam, Danida has provided signifcant support and innovative approaches for poor communities, such as
with the Buon Ma Thuot sanitation scheme, a multi-dimensional programme to support the poor. This includes
private latrines for households, and public latrines for primary and secondary schools as well as for city health
stations. Based upon an initial USD 350 000 Danida-funded investment, an estimated 44 500 poor people in low-
income areas have benefted from improved sanitation.
Key to the success of the scheme was its demand-driven nature, based on both fnancial contributions and
the establishment of workable management arrangements for all facilities. In addition, recipients were closely
involved in the development of appropriate technical solutions for on-site school sanitation, with an education
campaign central to the public school latrine programme. The students in turn take the message of appropriate
health and hygiene back to their families at home.
In addition to capitalizing on this methodology, the next phase expanded the scope of improved sanitation with
the construction of 30 public latrines in the Ede ethnic minority villages located within the city's low-income area.
The overall on-site programme has provided access to improved sanitation facilities to over 110 000 people within
the city's urban and low-income areas, at an overall cost of USD 850 000. With an implementation cost under USD
8.00 per head, this programme demonstrates that low- cost implementation can be associated with long-term
Source: Available at: http://www.adb.org/Documents/Periodicals/ADB_Review/2003/vil35_1/governance.asp
Box 8 : Innovations in Vietnam (on-site sanitation)
61 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
In order to identify which governance mechanisms
are inclusive and /or exclusive of the poor and
marginalised groups, we shall attempt to identify
some of the gaps in existing typologies in a manner
that will contribute to, and strengthen the key
competencies of UN-HABITAT by incorporating
normative work (including setting norms, standards,
and priorities); monitoring and evaluation; capacity
building; advocacy and awareness raising campaigns;
partnership building at local level; and demonstration
and piloting of innovative approaches.
6.1. A multi-stakeholder
engagement approach
Most attempts at developing pro-poor water
governance frameworks have proposed an approach
that involves all stakeholders in decision-making
processes that affect access to and provision of water
and sanitation services. Developing a tri-sectoral
approach to leveraging expertise from various
stakeholders in which government, civil society
and the private sector are linked, is seen as a crucial
step, which needs to precede the allocation of roles
to national governments or to other participants.
In this approach, it has been suggested that multi-
stakeholder engagements must be supported by
multi-tier management so that national government
water supply and sanitation policies and strategies for
the urban poor do not undermine other stakeholders,
and particularly those at local levels i.e. civil society
and communities.
Clearly, in most low–income urban areas, problems
associated with access to safe water are more often
related to power relations rather than to lack of water
supply, whether this is on a large scale, through the
lowering of groundwater, or on a local scale with
access to standpipes, or pricing issues
88 See, Ashley Roe, BCID seminar series, 2006
89 See, BCID Seminar Series, 2006.
Te limitations of the multi-stakeholder engagement
a) Te difficulty of identifying stakeholder groups
and, more specifically, ensuring accurate repre-
sentation of the different groups.
b) Establishing effective processes for linking local
practices and government policy-making: Te
interface between service providers and users,
i.e., turning policy into practice, is a process that
is mediated by social relations and negotiated
through mutual understanding of the value of
equitable access, use and management. Tis is a
process that most proposed frameworks have not
c) Inadequate tools for mapping institutional plu-
rality and for articulating conflicting needs:
Given that most local water governance is not
necessarily pro-poor, the chronic nature of pov-
erty requires a framework that helps poor urban
communities to identify, articulate and partici-
pate in activities that affect equitable access to
water supply and sanitation services. As a pro-
poor approach, therefore, the multi-stakeholder
type of engagement lacks the conflict resolution
mechanisms that are required to address the in-
herent competition and latent conflicts often as-
sociated with diverse institutional arrangements
and with interaction between multiple actors.
d) Coordination problems: Involving multiple
stakeholders across scales and sectors is often dif-
ficult to realise because of coordination problems
and conflicts in perceptions, needs and desirable
6.0. Emerging typologies and guiding principles for developing a pro-
poor urban water and sanitation governance framework
62 Review of existing concepts of water governance
6.2. Pro-poor national and local
institutional and legal frameworks
Te term 'institution' comprises a wide variety of
, including:
n Legislation detailing rights and responsibilities.
n Public policies setting out objectives and mech-
anisms for management.
n Decision-making and/or consulting institu-
n Public agencies to carry out mandated func-
n Cultural norms and values underlying the way
different actors think and act.
n Informal or traditional institutions underpin-
ning historical water management practices;
n Financial arrangements for setting use charges
and other tariffs, market segmentation, sanc-
tions, etc.
It has been argued that water governance takes
place within the wider framework of local or
State governance, and any assessment of the legal
and institutional arrangements that support pro-
poor urban water governance must analyze the
n Te degree of interference of the wider local
governance on pro-poor urban water supply and
sanitation service provision;
n Te impact of other sector policies and institu-
tional arrangements, e.g., those concerned with
housing, physical infrastructure, land tenure,
environment, health, etc.
n Te impact of legal and institutional arrange-
ments on the performance of utilities and small
scale service providers; and
n Te role of privatisation legislation on water sup-
ply and sanitation services for the urban poor.
From an institutional perspective, corruption is a
90 See http://www.fao.org/ag/wfe2005/docs/Theme_III.doc
major challenge and a symptom of poor governance,
which should, at the very least, be addressed by
governments, bilateral and multilateral organisations
as it entails many negative consequences for the
development of the water and sanitation sector.
Te underlying causes of the high degrees of
corruption inherent in the current institutional and
legal structures include factors such as the wide
latitude and authority endowed on public officials,
lack of accountability, and perverse incentives that
detract from adherence to existing rules, regulations
and contractual requirements. Tese consequences
are disproportionately borne by the poor as they lack
the resources to compete with those who are better
off and willing to pay the bribes.
Limitations of the legal and institutions approach:
a) Te role of national government in exclusion:
Trough their structures, procedures and legal
frameworks, governments exclude some groups
from full enjoyment of economic rights, while
including others. To define pro-poor water
policies through legal and institutional regimes,
an understanding of the processes that create
poverty is necessary; while individuals experi-
ence poverty and can work their way out of it,
there is also truth in the statement that socie-
ties produce poverty through processes of exclu-
Te deprivation commonly associated
with exclusion is related to a lack not only of
economic resources, but also of recognition and
entitlements. In this sense, access to water can
be viewed as a potential vehicle for achieving
economic and political rights. Tese are prereq-
uisites for full citizenship, which in turn open
up opportunities for political participation.
b) It is also clear from recent international discus-
sions on improving water supply and sanitation
to the urban poor that most legal frameworks
for water, sanitation and the environment still
support models of service provision that are ei-
ther inadequate, or simply based on outmoded
standards, with no proper definition of what
constitutes equitable access to or provision (in
regulation or engagement) of services for the ur-
ban poor.
91 WWDRI, 2006 pp66; UNDP, 2004. Anticorruption. New York, Practice Note. Corruption reduces economic growth, discourages
investment, decreases and diverts government revenues, and renders rules and regulations ineffective.
92 Philippus Wester, Hugo de Vos and Jim Woodhill. Discussion Paper Theme 3: 'The Enabling Environment' See, http://www.
63 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
c) Most of the sector reforms geared towards
meeting Target 10 are based on institutional ar-
rangements and management practices that are
not appropriate for achieving economies of scale
in various socio-economic contexts, i.e., they
have no cost-efficiency scale of management;
this is particularly the case when the reforms are
applied at individual and household levels and
when they deal with poor informal urban set-
tlements that have no formal arrangements with
service providers.
Although legal and institutional provisions are made
to extend water supply and sanitation to the urban
poor, it is important that any new Pro-poor Urban
Water Governance framework identifies to what
extent current policies and institutional frameworks
accommodate the needs of these vulnerable groups,
since obstacles to water supply and sanitation
provision for the urban poor are, for a large extent,
institutional rather than technical.
the focus should be on the following three areas:
designing innovative regulatory frameworks which
evaluate the impact of existing legal and institutional
arrangements on water supply and sanitation for
the urban poor; establishing pro-poor mechanisms
in existing policy provisions; and designing means
93 McGranahan and Satterthwaite, IIED, 2003, 'Pro-poor Urban Water and Sanitation governance'
of actively engaging communities at all levels in
planning, design and management. Tis would
help make policy decisions more accountable to the
Terefore, available institutional choices should not
be confined to public versus private sector, but should
instead adopt the multi-tier approach suggested
under section 5.1. above, while also catering for
sustainability (to be able to cover operational,
maintenance and replacement costs).
6.3. Pro-poor financing and
investment mechanisms
In addition to improvements in multi-stakeholder
and sector capacities, adequate water supply and
sanitation provision to poor urban settlements
requires dramatic improvements in financing and
investment for improved sustainability, as well as
in the reduction of the risks associated with the
urban water cycle; the need here is to catalyze new
investment opportunities and to promote donor
collaboration in pro-poor interventions. However,
while it is clear that the management of water
resources and the delivery of water and sanitation
94 The 2004 World Development Report on 'Making Services Work for the Poor' suggests that a simple PPUWG framework
should be based on the fact that the demand for improvement must come from the poor people themselves, and that any degree of
improvement will depend upon the infuence that poor people can bring to bear on service providers, either directly or through
the government.
In South Africa, the government has enacted water legislation that sets out procedures for the creation of a reserve
of water for basic human needs and the environment, after lengthy public consultations. In Durban, utilities have
been given incentives to improve service for the urban poor, which included abolishing water charges altogether.
However, reviews of this approach have pointed out that necessary as it is, innovation must not ignore potential
conficts involving fnancial, economic and environmental sustainability. Urban water utilities often fail to provide
adequate water supply and sanitation to urban low-income communities; consequently, any improvement must
include institutional and technical innovations at the following levels:
a) within the community;
b) at the interface between community and the utility; and
c) in national government policies and strategies.
Source: http//www.dwaf.pwv.gov.za/idwaf/documents [accessed 02 June 2006].
Box 9 : What constitutes pro-poor institutional innovations?
64 Review of existing concepts of water governance
services are central to poverty-reduction, there is
much to be learned about how investments in these
areas could be made more effective.
Experience from a number of countries shows that
significant improvement in services to low-income
urban areas can be achieved through innovation
in management and financing mechanisms, and
by building on community and private sector
However, many utilities do not know how
to handle this, nor do they understand the pitfalls and
obstacles. For instance, reforming tariff structures to
achieve cost recovery is not incompatible with the
objective of making water available and affordable
to all households. Te greatest scope for establishing
transparent and equitable charges lies at the planning
stage and depends on the degree of commitment
given to pro-poor policies. Once arrangements
are in place, however, it becomes gradually harder
to implement a pro-poor policy, unless these are
anticipated in regulatory mechanisms. Considering
that the construction, operation and maintenance of
water systems entail huge costs, sustainability cannot
be achieved unless costs are fairly shared among all
system customers.
It is important to analyze the range of factors that
cause the failures in water governance inherent in
most countries. Tese include: inappropriate price
regulation and tax incentives, perverse subsidies,
lack of entrepreneurial incentives for internal
efficiency, conflicting regulatory regimes, inaccurate
reflection of consumer preferences, monopoly
situations, non-payment for services, bureaucratic
inaction, ill-defined property rights, and ignorance
and uncertainty about water markets.
From the typologies of governance emerging today,
it appears that the essence of establishing pro-
poor urban water and sanitation governance is to
promote the recognition of the role of civil society
and communities (including the way they organise
themselves) alongside other demands made in urban
contexts, and to do so in a sustainable manner.
Consequently, the bottlenecks that contribute to
inadequate water supply and sanitation provision
among the urban poor must be considered in the
proposed framework for pro-poor urban water and
95 Cross,P. and Morel A.WSP-AF, Nairobi. Pro-poor strategies for urban water and sanitation services delivery in Africa.
sanitation governance.
Tose six bottlenecks are listed below:
a) The extent of political and stakeholder
participation in water use issues:
Clearly, stakeholders seek to assert control over water
in order protect their own values and interests, and
therefore engage in a variety of forums at different
levels, both formal and informal. However, given
the political nature of water management and use in
most countries, a certain amount of fragmentation is
to be expected, and therefore participation must be
polycentric - i.e., involving a number of organisations
and stakeholders - with various stakeholder coalitions
determining exactly how water is to be used, and
thereby setting standards for delivery systems.
Analysts of water governance have explored the
interests of various stakeholders in a bid to assess who
is and is not involved in water management, as well
as how and why they are involved. At the watershed
or river basin level, existing perspectives have to a
large extent failed to capture the complexity of the
way in which water use is affected by actions at the
local, regional and national levels, ranging from
water legislation, labour force migration, market
demands, etc.
In most poor urban areas, both national and local
government have failed to establish the mutual
dependency necessary for collaboration between
national and sector policies on the one hand, and
stakeholders and institutions (utilities, small-scale
providers, civil society and low-income residents)
on the other. It should be noted that political
participation determines in part whether change
occurs, as well as who benefits and who loses in
terms of access to and use of water resources.
Governments and international agencies have failed
to support local actions in ways that involve (and
are accountable to) those who are ill-served if at all,
and that tap into local resources and capacities, and
this failure has been identified as a major reason for
inadequate water supply and sanitation provision to
65 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
most poor urban areas, (UN-HABITAT, 2006).
b) Inadequate pro-poor water
and sanitation policies:
With regard to access to water and sanitation
services by the urban poor, and the management
and regulation of these services, the policies and laws
that determine relevant practices and technologies
pose challenging questions: how effectively is water
used under these policies? For what purposes? What
alternatives exist for both water and sanitation? How
can policy be changed to become pro-poor? Policies
necessarily engage the politics of water governance
and play a crucial role in clarifying the rights and
obligations of various stakeholders, and in ensuring
effective monitoring, compliance, and enforcement.
Conflicts, such as those over privatisation of water
supply networks, become sharper in the absence of
social cohesion, or when formal policy threatens the
ability of the poor to access and use water.
c) Lack of capacities among
poor urban communities:
Tis highlights the need to enhance the capacity of
water users to influence decision-making.
includes a wide range of skills, including the ability
of poor communities to identify policy gaps, design
workable programmes, assess the policy environment,
and communicate effectively with service providers,
water managers and those who influence water
and sanitation provision. Enhancing the capacity
of both civil society and urban poor communities
to govern water and sanitation can focus on the
individual level - the skills and experiences of people
- or the institutional level - the existence and ability
of organisations that can host and support such
d) Innovativeness and adaptability
at community levels:
Innovation is more than a matter of developing
new technologies or installing devices; it involves
transforming society and its value systems (Sagasti,
96 Allen and Wouters 2004
97 Wester et al. 2003.
2004). Care should be taken to ensure that innovative
institutional change involving the development of
mechanisms for equitable water sharing does not
result from a perceived threat of conflict. Whilst
water related conflict can be a catalyst for innovation,
the absence of overt conflict as a measure of the
success of such changes may obscure the more subtle
forms conflict may take.
e) Shifts in water management strategies:
Tis is to recognise the fact that as the marginal
cost of improving supply increases, the strategy
shifts to maximizing the economic value of water
use. As a result, under extreme scarcity, society faces
trade-offs between economic and social objectives,
and the strategy shifts to addressing the underlying
culture and values that govern the way society uses
water. Understanding water governance is essential
for navigating such shifts in water management
f) Competing water uses
and effect on tariffs:
Inadequate incentives to invest in improved efficiency
in water use by various consumers (upstream and
downstream) endangers the ability of the urban (and
rural) poor to secure sufficient amounts of water for
their daily needs.
6.4. Human Rights approach
"Billions of people are unable to hold governments,
corporations and international organisations
accountable when they deliberately neglect the
poor, such as people living in informal settlements,
and when they violate the right of water users to
participate in decision making on how their services
are managed, as has been seen in many cases of water
utility privatisation."
Te human right to water concentrates on five
primary features that make a significant contribution
98 Quoting Scott Leckie, Executive Director of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), at
the World Water Forum in Mexico, March 2006.
99 Quoting Scott Leckie, Executive Director of the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), at
the World Water Forum in Mexico, March 2006.
66 Review of existing concepts of water governance
to current developmental efforts to improve access to
water by the poor:
a) Te right to water means that government
must make it a priority to ensure access to adequate
water services for all, using available resources in
a pro-poor manner. Te UN General Comment
on the Right to Water notes that in far too many
situations, States put in place expensive services for
the sole benefit of a small privileged fraction of the
population, rather than low-cost alternatives that
would provide water for a greater number of people.
b) Te right to water provides a strong basis
for individuals and groups to hold States and other
actors to account. Communities can use this right
when lobbying the State for water services, or lobby-
ing to manage their own water programmes without
arbitrary interference from the State, or without de-
mands for bribes. A legal entitlement to water effec-
tively gives sympathetic government officials a man-
date to ensure access to water for poor and margin-
alised groups. It can also increase the political profile
of issues related to access to water. Te right to water
would also exert greater pressure on wealthier States
to contribute to the efforts by developing countries
to ensure access to safe water for all.
c) Informal settlements across the world are
often denied water services as a matter of policy.
Denial of access to water can, in some situations
result from a deliberate choice by governments, or
local authorities, to exclude communities that are
seen as undesirable. For instance, the European
Roma Rights Centre has documented the refusal
of a local authority to supply a Roma informal
settlement with water and sanitation despite offers
from international foundations to provide funding;
Roma residents subsequently contracted skin diseases
after using contaminated groundwater.
d) Te human right to water requires
genuine consultation and participation of affected
communities in water service delivery and in efforts
to conserve water resources. One good example is
the municipality of Porto Alegre, Brazil, where the
operations of the public water utility undergo a
participatory budgeting process. In public meetings,
every citizen can have a say on which new investments
should be made first. Tis model has contributed
to a dramatic increases in access to water by poor
communities in Porto Alegre.
e) Two of the most significant obstacles to
access to water, particularly for the poor, are lack of
political will and corruption. National institutions,
such as courts and human rights commissions,
as well as Non-Governmental Organizations
involved in the promotion of human rights can
monitor government programmes in order to ensure
accountability. In Argentina, communities suffering
from the use of polluted groundwater have obtained
a court order requiring the government to provide
emergency water supplies and to decontaminate
water resources. Courts in India, Argentina, Brazil
and South Africa, among others, have reversed
decisions to cut off water supplies to people who
were unable to pay. At the international level, UN
human rights institutions monitor whether States
have implemented their commitments and publicly
point out when they have failed to do so.
Tis approach argues that every individual must
have access to water that is:
n Sufficient. An adequate quantity must be avail-
able in accordance with international guidelines.
Tis normally means 50-100 litres per day, and
an absolute minimum of 20 litres.
n Safe. Water used for personal and domestic uses
must be safe.
n Physically accessible. Water must be within safe
physical reach, in or near the house, school or
health facility.
n Affordable. Water should be affordable, and not
reduce an individual's capacity to buy other es-
sential goods.
Consequently, the human rights-based approach
to development can be seen as a responsibility-
based approach: It asks 'who is, and who should
be, responsible for what with respect to whom?' In
this respect, one of the most useful outcomes of a
responsibility-based analysis of the role of individual
67 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
duty bearers is recognition of the interdependence
of various rights, together with the identification of
actors whose behaviour could contribute to changes
that enhance the effectiveness of those rights.
The limitations of the Human
rights-based approach:
Human rights are principally concerned with
obligations imposed on governments; however, other
actors in society should participate in making the
right to water a reality, and this approach fails to
specify how all these actors can be held to account
where water is not accessed or adequately provided.
Developing a pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance framework is clearly necessary in order to
establish rules of engagement between stakeholders
of differing opinions, and as a first step in the
development of a range of tools for assessing pro-
poor governance structures. A pro-poor urban water
and sanitation governance framework will also set
the pace for the implementation of pro-poor water
and sanitation concepts in the water sector as well
as other fields.
68 Review of existing concepts of water governance
7.0. Proposed Framework & Possible tools:
(See the proposed framework for promoting pro-poor water
and sanitation governance in urban programmes
and projects - Part II – separate document)
69 i n ur ban pr ogr ammes and pr oj e c t s
It is important to note that even where appropriate
pro-poor approaches for ensuring adequate water
supply and sanitation services to the urban poor are
developed, one should expect to come up against
certain 'cross-cutting' constraints that go beyond the
. Tese may include:
n legal/tenure issues, particularly in low-income
and informal areas, which interfere with the
ability of service providers/ small-scale operators
to deliver services to the poor;
n capacity constraints, in the absence of decen-
tralized governance and administration;
n budgetary constraints, which affect the design
and implementation of a workable subsidy re-
gime for the poor;
n policy and legal constraints with regard to the
operations of small-scale and independent pro-
n legal and regulatory constraints to private sec-
tor participation, which may be detrimental to
small community-based schemes;
n lack of a reliable national monitoring and evalu-
ation scheme, which may result in the develop-
ment of isolated and costly local sector-specific
n legal constraints linked to payment for services,
which may prevent utilities from implementing
a frequent payment system (for example in ki-
osks, which may be ineffective for poor house-
holds reliant on daily wages).
In view of these forms of constraints, the key to
improving water supply and sanitation services to the
urban poor may lie first in mapping the poor, then
identifying real sector constraints and developing
appropriate programme support or interventions
which help to address these constraints.
100 Danida, 2006. Ibid, pp.18
If proposed pro-poor urban water and sanitation
governance frameworks are to meet current
challenges in urban areas, and if water supply and
sanitation service delivery is to meet the Millennium
Development Goals, programmes must include the
following elements:
n coherent sector plans and programmes must
blend more instruments in their interventions
(including pro-poor pilots) to maintain progress,
and test innovative approaches;
n increase budgetary support through enhanced
n engage in water supply and sanitation invest-
ment interventions, with an emphasis on urban
low-income areas and small towns;
n promote participatory planning for appropriate
technologies and overall interventions ;
n build capacities and establish links and dia-
logue across government departments, donors,
promote implementation of designs and proc-
esses relevant to the water supply and sanitation
sector for the sake of consistency, and improve
monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.
8.0. Conclusions and Recommendations
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74 Review of existing concepts of water governance
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