			Home About us Contact

Water Services (water + services)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	37%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	37%

Selected Abstracts

Privatisation Results: Private Sector Participation in Water Services After 15 Years

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 6 2006
Naren Prasad
Privatisation of public infrastructure has been the mantra of many development agencies since the late 1980s. Water supply is no exception, and various forms of private sector participation (PSP) have been tried in the water and sanitation sector. This article examines the results of these experiments. It suggests that PSP has had mixed results and that in several important respects the private sector seems to be no more efficient in delivering services than the public sector. Despite growing evidence of failures and increasing public pressure against it, privatisation in water and sanitation is still alive, however. Increasingly, it is being repackaged in new forms such as that of public-private partnership. [source]

The potential role for economic instruments in drought management,

IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE, Issue 4 2004
Stephen Merrett
changement du climat; gestion des sécheresses; irrigation; prix de l'eau Abstract Climate change in the twenty-first century will likely reduce the return period of drought events, indicating that drought management will be even more important in the future than it is already. In the case of England's Anglian region it is shown that two principal institutions are responsible for drought management,the Environment Agency and Anglian Water Services (AWS). The region has a fast-growing population of more than 5 million people, it has 58% of the most productive agricultural land in England and Wales, and in some summers irrigation can make up 50% of water use. An examination of the drought plans of the Agency and AWS demonstrates that in both cases the policy instruments that they deploy to manage drought are informational, infrastructural and regulatory. In neither case would they use water pricing as a management tool. Moreover, the government's drought plan guidelines for the water utilities make no reference to economic instruments of drought management nor do they suggest that utilities should review the economic impact on their customers of regulatory action. The principal issues that would arise if water charging were to be deployed as a drought management instrument are then reviewed. The paper concludes by proposing that national government should evaluate the feasibility, costs, benefits and risks of replacing the regulatory instruments of drought management by economic instruments. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Avec les changements climatiques prévus au vingt-et-unième siècle les périodes de sècheresse deviendront probablement plus fréquentes et la gestion de ces sécheresses deviendra plus problématique. Cet article indique que dans la région Anglian de l'Angleterre deux institutions ont la responsabilité de cette gestion: "the Environment Agency" et "Anglian Water Services". Un examen des plans d'action pour la sécheresse de ces deux institutions montre que, dans les deux cas, les instruments qui seront déployés seront soit informationels soit infrastructurels soit règlementaires. Il n'y a pas dans ces plans une seule référence au prix de l'eau comme instrument de gestion. De même les conseils du gouvernement national pour la préparation de ces plans ignorent les instruments économiques. L'article conclut que le gouvernement doit réviser la faisabilité des instruments de gestion des sécheresses, et d'estimation de leurs coûts et bénéfices pour introduire davantage d'instruments économiques. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

The impact of privatization and regulation on the water and sewerage industry in England and Wales: a translog cost function model

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 6 2000
David S Saal
After the ten Regional Water Authorities (RWAs) of England and Wales were privatized in November 1989, the successor Water and Sewerage Companies (WASCs) faced a new regulatory regime that was designed to promote economic efficiency while simultaneously improving drinking water and environmental quality. As legally mandated quality improvements necessitated a costly capital investment programme, the industry's economic regulator, the Office of Water Services (Ofwat), implemented a retail price index (RPI)+K pricing system, which was designed to compensate the WASCs for their capital investment programme while also encouraging gains in economic efficiency. In order to analyse jointly the impact of privatization, as well as the impact of increasingly stringent economic and environmental regulation on the WASCs' economic performance, this paper estimates a translog multiple output cost function model for the period 1985,1999. Given the significant costs associated with water quality improvements, the model is augmented to include the impact of drinking water quality and environmental quality on total costs. The model is then employed to determine the extent of scale and scope economies in the water and sewerage industry, as well as the impact of privatization and economic regulation on economic efficiency. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

A tale of two cities: restoring water services in Kabul and Monrovia

DISASTERS, Issue 4 2009
Jean-François Pinera
Kabul and Monrovia, the respective capitals of Afghanistan and Liberia, have recently emerged from long-lasting armed conflicts. In both cities, a large number of organisations took part in emergency water supply provision and later in the rehabilitation of water systems. Based on field research, this paper establishes a parallel between the operations carried out in the two settings, highlighting similarities and analysing the two most common strategies. The first strategy involves international financial institutions, which fund large-scale projects focusing on infrastructural rehabilitation and on the institutional development of the water utility, sometimes envisaging private-sector participation. The second strategy involves humanitarian agencies, which run community-based projects, in most cases independently of the water utilities, and targeting low-income areas. Neither of these approaches manages to combine sustainability and universal service. The paper assesses their respective strengths and weaknesses and suggests ways of improving the quality of assistance provided. [source]

Past and future sustainability of water policies in Europe

NATURAL RESOURCES FORUM, Issue 3 2003
Bernard Barraqué
The article contributes to a discussion on two global issues on water: water resources management, and water supply and sanitation. Focusing on Europe, it traces the legal roots of current systems in history: as a resource, water is considered as a common property, rather than a market good; while as a public service it is usually a commodity. Public water supply and sanitation technologies and engineering have developed under three main paradigms: quantitative and civil engineering; qualitative and chemical/sanitary engineering (both on the supply side); and the most recent one, environmental engineering and integrated management (on the demand side). The cost of public drinking water is due to rise sharply in view of the two-fold financial challenge of replacing an ageing infrastructure and keeping up with ever-rising environmental and sanitary quality standards. Who will pay? Government subsidies, or water users? The author suggests that apparent successes with privatisation may have relied heavily on hidden government subsidies and/or the healthy state of previously installed water infrastructure: past government subsidies are still felt for as long as the lifetime of the infrastructure. The article stresses the importance of public participation and decentralized local management of water and sanitation services. Informing and involving users in water management decisions is seen as an integral part of the ,ethics' side of the crucial three E's (economics, environment, ethics). The article strongly argues for municipal provision of water services, and hopes that lessons learnt and solutions found in the European experience may serve water services management efforts in other regions of the world. [source]

INTERNATIONAL TRENDS IN WATER UTILITY REGIMES

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2007
Yeti Nisha Madhoo
ABSTRACT,:,This paper provides the taxonomy of country experiences in managing their water utilities. Institutions for water supply for various uses and their financial implications are analysed. Different episodes of governmental intervention in water supply and charging are examined. From the survey of different regimes and the existing literature, cost recovery and affordability emerge as the major building blocks for any reform of water utilities. Privatization of water services in terms of ownership change, public-private arrangements and international involvement seems to be a mixed blessing and donor assistance to water projects raises issues in international inequality and does not increase cost recovery levels. Cost recovery is positively associated with economic development, institutional quality and performance of water utilities. [source]

Organization, Management and Delegation in the French Water Industry

ANNALS OF PUBLIC AND COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2001
Jihad C. Elnaboulsi
The water industry is largely a natural monopoly. Water distribution and sewerage services are characterized by networks and its natural monopoly derives from the established local networks of drinking water and sewers: they are capital intensive with sunk costs and increasing returns to scale. In France, local communities have a local requirement of providing public services under optimum conditions in terms of techniques and cost-effectiveness, and subject to respect different kind of standards in terms of water quality and level of services. They are responsible for producing and distributing drinking water, and collecting and treating wastewater. Furthermore, the French water utilities are required to be financially self-sufficient. Rate-setting varies across regions and local territories due to a variety of organizational features of services and availability of water resources. The management of these local public services can be public or private: local governments have the right, by the constitution, to delegate water service management to private companies which operate under the oversight of local municipal authorities. Today, nearly 80 per cent of the French population receive private distributed water. Different reasons are responsible for the poor performance and low productivity of most French public water utilities: technical and operational, commercial and financial, human and institutional, and environmental. Thus, many water public utilities have looked for alternative ways to provide water and sanitation services more efficiently, to improve both operational and investment efficiency, and to attract private finance. The purpose of this paper is to present the French organizational system of providing drinking water services, and collecting and treating wastewater services: legal aspects, contracts of delegation, and competition. [source]

Urban water supply and local neoliberalism in Tagbilaran City, the Philippines

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2009
Karen T. Fisher
Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the processes and outcomes of neoliberalism in relation to urban water supply in the city of Tagbilaran, the Philippines, in order to provide a nuanced account of (an) actually existing hybrid neoliberal space. Using Bakker's typology of market environmentalist reforms in resource management as a guiding frame to link this case to a bigger ,neoliberal' conversation, I distinguish how reforms to resource governance at the national level, coupled with changes in the ways in which resource management institutions and resource management organisations function at the local level have acted to constitute local practices of neoliberal governance. Local articulations of (national and supranational) neoliberal and development discourses are revealed as a means for reconceptualising the role of the state and the emergence of new forms of hybrid governance in Tagbilaran. Analysis of the operation of BWUI, a public/private water utility, and the politics of privatisation/private sector participation enables a closer inspection of how water and water services are politicised and resisted by local publics. [source]