Articles
General · 31st May 2009
Building Capacity - Intro to PuPs
Building the capacity of public water utilities: an introduction to public-public partnerships By: Gemma Boag, UK Communications Rep
This article was copied with permission from the author and was recently published in “The Aqueduct,” the Canadian Water Network Student and Young Professional Newsletter
At the beginning of the 21st century, more than one billion people lack basic water access. Other problems associated with water quantity and quality management are also increasing around the world, particularly as countries face the adaptation challenges associated with climate change. Although private sector participation in the water services sector increased over the 1990s, the majority of water utilities are still publicly owned and run. This reality, coupled with the fact that a significant anti-privatization lobby exists for water services, has prompted interest in new approaches to build the capacity of public water operators and deal with the challenges presented by poverty, environmental change and infrastructure ageing.
The concept of ‘public-public partnerships’ or ‘PUPs’ has been presented as one alternative method. They can be broadly described as not-for-profit partnerships between public water operators and other “public” bodies, including other water utilities, various levels of government, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions. Depending on the partnership arrangement, the primary goal is to achieve improvement in various aspects of the service delivery process, either in one or both partners. Spatially, partnerships can occur on a local intracountry basis, between countries in the same region or with similar socioeconomic contexts (i.e. South-South or North-North partnerships) and also between high-income and low-income countries (i.e. a development partnership). The latter type normally involves a one-way transfer of knowledge, capacity, and resources towards a poorly functioning water utility while intracountry and South-South or North-North partnerships can lend themselves well to a reciprocal flow of benefits.
While there is a plurality of past and current PUP approaches, I will illustrate just two case studies here, focusing on operator-operator partnerships in a northern or ‘developed’ situation and a southern or ‘developing’ context. Some of the most well-documented PUPs have taken place in north-east Europe’s Baltic states, including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Russia’s Baltic cities: St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. One example is the partnership between Sweden’s Stockholm Vatten and Lithuania’s Kaunas Water. A main objective of the partnership was to revitalize Kaunas’ wastewater treatment system, thereby reducing overall pollution discharge into the Baltic Sea. With financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and operational support from Stockholm Vatten, this partnership achieved benefits for all parties – Kaunas upgraded its wastewater technology and Sweden (not too mention all other states in the region) reaped the rewards of better water quality in the Baltic. Building international solidarity between public water operators can lead to increased solidarity over common pool resource issues like water quality management.
Moving to intra-country partnerships in the South, PUPs have been highlighted for their role in helping water operators extend service connections to low-income communities. India’s Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) embarked on a reorganization of its services to place increased focus on providing water access to the poor.
Creating a ‘Change Management Group’, the utility pioneered a process of training water utility engineers about the importance of achieving equity and social justice in their work. This approach was then spread to water utilities in two other states, Maharashtra and Jharkand, through a PUP.
Officials from TWAD would run workshops in other states to educate their engineers about the importance of increasing access to unserved communities. These techniques have now reached the national level, with UNICEF and the Indian government funding a National Level Change Management Forum which aims to spread TWAD’s lessons to all public operators in the country.
There are many further examples of PUPs, including ones that occur on a North-South basis and between partners other than water utilities. If you would like more information on these cases please contact me at gemmaboag(at)gmail.com. As more and more partnerships are formed and opportunities and constraints are realized, research will need to be done on the relative effectiveness of different partnership types and arrangements. Thus far, it appears as though a very basic idea – the sharing of knowledge and experience – may help public water operators deal with the various challenges facing them, both in the North and the South.
This article was copied with permission from the author and was recently published in “The Aqueduct,” the Canadian Water Network Student and Young Professional Newsletter
At the beginning of the 21st century, more than one billion people lack basic water access. Other problems associated with water quantity and quality management are also increasing around the world, particularly as countries face the adaptation challenges associated with climate change. Although private sector participation in the water services sector increased over the 1990s, the majority of water utilities are still publicly owned and run. This reality, coupled with the fact that a significant anti-privatization lobby exists for water services, has prompted interest in new approaches to build the capacity of public water operators and deal with the challenges presented by poverty, environmental change and infrastructure ageing.
The concept of ‘public-public partnerships’ or ‘PUPs’ has been presented as one alternative method. They can be broadly described as not-for-profit partnerships between public water operators and other “public” bodies, including other water utilities, various levels of government, nongovernmental organizations and trade unions. Depending on the partnership arrangement, the primary goal is to achieve improvement in various aspects of the service delivery process, either in one or both partners. Spatially, partnerships can occur on a local intracountry basis, between countries in the same region or with similar socioeconomic contexts (i.e. South-South or North-North partnerships) and also between high-income and low-income countries (i.e. a development partnership). The latter type normally involves a one-way transfer of knowledge, capacity, and resources towards a poorly functioning water utility while intracountry and South-South or North-North partnerships can lend themselves well to a reciprocal flow of benefits.
While there is a plurality of past and current PUP approaches, I will illustrate just two case studies here, focusing on operator-operator partnerships in a northern or ‘developed’ situation and a southern or ‘developing’ context. Some of the most well-documented PUPs have taken place in north-east Europe’s Baltic states, including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Russia’s Baltic cities: St Petersburg and Kaliningrad. One example is the partnership between Sweden’s Stockholm Vatten and Lithuania’s Kaunas Water. A main objective of the partnership was to revitalize Kaunas’ wastewater treatment system, thereby reducing overall pollution discharge into the Baltic Sea. With financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and operational support from Stockholm Vatten, this partnership achieved benefits for all parties – Kaunas upgraded its wastewater technology and Sweden (not too mention all other states in the region) reaped the rewards of better water quality in the Baltic. Building international solidarity between public water operators can lead to increased solidarity over common pool resource issues like water quality management.
Moving to intra-country partnerships in the South, PUPs have been highlighted for their role in helping water operators extend service connections to low-income communities. India’s Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board (TWAD) embarked on a reorganization of its services to place increased focus on providing water access to the poor.
Creating a ‘Change Management Group’, the utility pioneered a process of training water utility engineers about the importance of achieving equity and social justice in their work. This approach was then spread to water utilities in two other states, Maharashtra and Jharkand, through a PUP.
Officials from TWAD would run workshops in other states to educate their engineers about the importance of increasing access to unserved communities. These techniques have now reached the national level, with UNICEF and the Indian government funding a National Level Change Management Forum which aims to spread TWAD’s lessons to all public operators in the country.
There are many further examples of PUPs, including ones that occur on a North-South basis and between partners other than water utilities. If you would like more information on these cases please contact me at gemmaboag(at)gmail.com. As more and more partnerships are formed and opportunities and constraints are realized, research will need to be done on the relative effectiveness of different partnership types and arrangements. Thus far, it appears as though a very basic idea – the sharing of knowledge and experience – may help public water operators deal with the various challenges facing them, both in the North and the South.