Boosting Effectiveness Of Water Operator Partnerships Iii (Direct Support To Waterworx Programme)

The global challenges to provide sustainable access to clean water and improved sanitation for everyone, everywhere, are exceedingly complex. Population growth, urbanisation and changes in consumption patterns, in combination with climate change and a damaged environment, create an enormous pressure on the global (drinking) water system. In 20151, 96% of the world’s population (6.6 billion people) had access to an improved drinking water source, compared to 82% in 2000, at the start of the MDG-72 initiative. Despite this improvement, it is estimated that 663 million people still do not have access to an improved water source or use unpurified surface water, which causes major health problems and economic loss. It is often the extremely poor who lack access to drinking water systems, relying instead on (often polluted) local sources or paying relatively large amounts of money to ‘water vendors’. The lack of drinking water facilities also constitutes an additional burden for women who spend much time every day gathering water, which often leads to lagging education or too little time to take care of the family or do any paid work.

In 2015, 2.4 billion people still had no access to improved sanitation, of whom 946 million did not even have any facilities at all. Despite considerable improvements, the unsafe management of faecal waste and waste water is a continued health and environmental risk across the world. The lack of availability of personal sanitation for girls in schools is a reason for many parents to keep their daughters at home.

Another major challenge is the global growth in areas experiencing water stress. Today, more than 2 billion people across the world suffer from a lack of drinking water, and if seasonal effects are taken into account, this number will even increase to an estimated 4 billion3 people. In addition, not all improved water sources are safe. It has been estimated that in 2012 at least 1.8 billion people were exposed to drinking water contaminated with traces of faecal matter.

Proper water supply is often limited by institutional factors. Water suppliers struggle to cover their costs in cities as a result of political sensitivity to tariff changes4. Investors often tend to ignore or forget the poorest groups of society, so that water does not reach those groups. Water companies in many countries depend on subsidies or donors and are not used to seeing their costs covered. In many cities, much more water enters the distribution net than what is invoiced to clients (Non-Revenue Water). On average, 40% to 50% of drinking water produced in developing countries is lost in a mix of technical and commercial problems5.

A final but certainly not insignificant challenge is the scarcity of financial means to respond to the above challenges. It has been calculated that the financial means to invest in the creation of new drinking and waste water systems available via 'Official Development Assistance' (ODA) financing and via international financing institutions is far from sufficient to meet the huge demand.

It should be clear that establishing sustainable access to drinking water and sanitation requires an approach in which forces and means are combined and focused. In order to achieve this, we should not only pay attention to access in general, but also specifically to access for the poorest people, who currently do not profit enough from the improvements of the past 15 years. This was also expressed with the drawing up of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) and the goals of High Level Panel On Water. 

In 2015 Minister Ploumen stated that the Netherlands wants to contribute significantly to SDG6 by providing 30 million people with sustainable access to safe drinking water, and 50 million people with sustainable access to improved sanitation. This statement is expressed in the new Dutch WASH strategy 2016-2030: “Contributing to water, sanitation and hygiene for all, forever”.

The Dutch drinking water companies, being socially aware organisations, also contribute to achieving the SDG6 goal through their foreign activities. In their foreign activities, the Dutch drinking water companies work according to their own interpretation of the not-for-profit, not-for-loss principle applying the “1% regulation”. This means that drinking water companies can use no more than 1% of their turnover for development collaborations (appendix 2).

With this programme proposal, the Dutch water companies take the initiative to contribute significantly to Minister Ploumen’s new WASH strategy through a collective approach and in cooperation with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An important ambition of the water companies is to grant sustainable drinking water access to 10 million people, of whom at least 25% belong to the poorest groups (making less than 1.25 USD per day)8, between 2017 and 2030.

An important central role in achieving the aims is fulfilled by local water companies in Africa, Asia and South America. The Dutch drinking water companies collaborate with these local companies according to “Water Operator Partnerships” (WOPs). As recommended by the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation and upon request of the former Secretary General, GWOPA is promoting the use of Water Operators' Partnerships (WOPs) to help water operators transfer their knowledge to their peers in order to raise their overall level of performance, for the betterment of the poor.

In a WOP collaboration, the technical, financial and operational business practices of these water companies is improved in a sustainable manner. Because local water companies have a great reach, the programme also (indirectly) contributes to improved water quality, supply security and affordability of drinking water for all people in the supply areas of the partners, i.e. a multiplicity of the aforementioned 10 million people for whom the programme aims to provide clean drinking water9.

For this initiative, the 10 Dutch drinking water companies and their WOP partners enter into a Public Private Partnership (PPP) collaboration with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which capacity, expertise, networks and financial means are combined to achieve greater effectiveness. This partnership, and the mutual development of the programme, creates a unique public-private collaboration that, when combined with the availability of investment means by third parties, will lead to sustainable drinking water access for millions of people in dozens of cities in developing and transition countries through a healthy and sustainable drinking water chain. With this collaboration, the Dutch drinking water sector aims to contribute significantly to the goals that the Netherlands has set to achieve SDG6. 

GWOPA is an external partner of the WaterWorX Programme. GWOPA´s 10 years experience on areas where WOP practice can improve as well as knowledge on the enabling or limiting environment to further support WOPs and link WOPs to funding make GWOPA a natural  partner to support WaterWorX Programme. The three main components of GWOPA in supporting the WaterWorX Programme focus on   improving the quality of the WOPs to reach the end goal through support on knowledge management, disseminate the WOP experience and achievements to further promote the uptake and support to this approach and to advocate for additional funding mechanisms to be directed to the WOP approach.