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205.42 92PO

THE POPULATION/ENVIRONMENT/

WATER-AND-SANITATION NEXUS

IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

by

John Briscoe

The World Bank

Washington DC

A paper presented at the Revelle Memorial Symposium,

Harvard University

October 1992

Urban areas of developing countries are the location of critical interactions between rapid populationgrowth and the environment. On the one hand, in rapidly-growing urban areas the aquatic environment isdegraded by both the inadequate disposal of wastes and by attempts to compensate for inadequatewater supply services. Conversely, the declining quantity and quality of available water means that thecosts of providing urban dwellers with water is rising, often rapidly. Declining environmental quality andinadequate water and sanitation services impose large health and economic costs, especially on theurban poor.

This paper argues that large gains-in environment quality, health, equity, and direct economic returns-can be made by adopting an approach which comprises four key elements:

. managing water resources better, taking account of economic efficiency and environmentalsustainability; • : : :

..-. providing, at full cost, those "private" services which people want and are willing to pay for(including water supply, and the collection of human excreta, wastewater, and solid waste) ;

. using scarce public funds only for those services (specifically the treatment and disposal of humanexcreta, wastewater, and solid Wastes) which provide wider còrnmunaí benefits; and

. developing flexible, responsive, institutional mechanisms for providing these services, withcommunity organizations and thé private sector playing a larger part.

Acknowledgements:

This paper is adapted from a background paper, done under the direction of Lawrence Summers andAndrew Steer, for the World Bank's 1992 World Development Report (WDR) on Development and theEnvironment. The paper draws heavily on the cumulated experience of World Bank water sector staff.Published and unpublished Bank studies by Mike Garn, Guillermo Yepes, Joszef Buky and Dale Whittingtonwere extensively used. The original WDR paper benefited from detailed and constructive comments fromother members of the WDR team, especially Dennis Anderson, John Dixon and Stephen Mink. Bank staffmembers Arthur Bruestle, Sergio Contreras, Chris Couzens, Geoff Matthews, Antonio Estache, Alain Thys,Walter Stottman, Tony van Vugt, David Grey, Albert Wright, John Blaxall, Ayse Kudat, Pauline Boerma,Andrew Macoun, Peter Koenig, Ramesh Bhatia, Janis Bernstein, Letitia Oliveira, and from several externalcommentators, including Dan Okun, Anjum Altaf, Stein Hansen, Richard Helmer, Charles Griffin, JamesWinpenny, Peter Rogers and Shiela Webb.

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I: THE POPUIATION/ENVIRONMENT/WATER-AND-SANITATION NEXUS

IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Urban areas of developing countries are thelocation of critical interactions between rapidpopulation growth and environmentaldegradation. On the one hand, in rapidly-growing urban areas the environment isdegraded by both the inadequate disposal ofwastes and by attempts to compensate forinadequate water supply services. Conversely,the declining quantity and quality of wateravailable means that the costs of providingurban dwellers with water is rising, often rapidly.Declining environmental quality and inadequatewater supply and sanitation services imposelarge health and economic costs, particularly onthe poor.

(a) The effects of water supplyand sanitation on theenvironment:

Population growth and the concentration ofpopulation in urban areas are fundamentalfactors contributing to urban environmentaldegradation. In 1990 most people lived in ruralareas. By 2030 urban populations will be twicethe size of rural populations. Developingcountry cities as a group will grow by 160percent over this period, whereas ruralpopulations will grow by only 10 percent. By2000 there will be twenty-one cities in the worldwith more than 10 million inhabitants, andseventeen of them will be in developingcountries.

The provision of services has not kept pace withpopulation growth in urban areas, thuscompounding the damage caused by the sheergrowth in numbers. In recent decades therehave been impressive but inadequate increasesin the provision of water supply and sanitationservices. Achievements have been impressivein that (as shown in Figure 1, overleaf), thenumber of urban people with access toadequate water supply and sanitation facilitiesincreased by, respectively, about 100% and50% in the 1980s, with the proportional gains in

rural areas even greater. These achievementsare inadequate in that the number of urbandwellers without adequate water services hasremained virtually stagnant, and the numberwithout adequate sanitation services increasedby 70 million in the 1980s.

Not only have the numbers of people servedincreased substantially in urban areas, but, asincomes have increased, the per capitaconsumption of those already served hasincreased. The sum of these effects is thatthere have been large increases in the volumesof water abstracted from sources in and aroundurban areas, and large increases in thevolumes of wastes generated.

The response to this rising pressure on theenvironment has been both insufficient andinefficient. In Latin America, for example, it isestimated that less than 2% of all sewage istreated. In World Bank-financed water andsewerage projects substantially less than one-fifth of all spending is for sewerage andsanitation components, a figure that has variedlittle over the last 15 years. The effects of theseinadequate levels of investment areexacerbated by the fact that existing treatmentfacilities function poorly. In Mexico, forexample, it is estimated that over 90% of allwastewater treatment plants are non-functional.

Figure 2 (overleaf) shows the results for surfacewater quality in developing countries. Surfacewater pollution is increasing rapidly, withparticularly severe problems evident in townsand cities and the areas surrounding them.Groundwater contamination is a much lessvisible but arguably more serious matter thansurface water pollution. This is so becauseunder most circumstances the movement ofwater in aquifers is so slow that it takesdecades for an aquifer to 'purge' itself, andbecause large numbers of people in cities indeveloping countries draw untreated drinkingwater from urban aquifers.

Brisco» paper for Revelia Symposium

Figure 1 : Access to safe water and adequatesanitation in developing countries, 1980 and 1990

Population (billion»)

<>'•• • . a s ' . i . o

VbtU

Uibm

Figure 2: Dissolved oxygen in rivers: levels and trends across country income groups

Riven inlow-income countries

Rivmin _Tiiddle'lncome countries

Acxxptmblc

Riven inhigh-income countria

Briscoe paper for Revelle Symposium

In some urban settings, environmentaldegradation also results from the actions whichhouseholds take to compensate forinadequacies in formal water supply services.There are two major categories of such effects.First, where piped water supplies are eitherunavailable or unreliable, and wheregroundwater is available, many householdscompensate by sinking wells. Where thispractice is widespread, heavy overpumping ofaquifers is common. In Jakarta, for instance,almost two-thirds of the population relies ongroundwater. In Northern Jakarta, the watertable has fallen continuously and rapidly sincethe mid-1970s. Seawater has contaminated thegroundwater in a 5 to 10 kilometer widecontinuous belt along the coastal plain. In animportant catchment (the Sunter area) the levelof chloride is currently exceeding 500 mg/l,about twice the WHO drinking water guidelinevalue.

In some cities - Bangkok, Jakarta and MexicoCity - excessive pumping has also led to landsubsidence, causing damage to property,housing and infrastructure. In Bangkok, forinstance, excessive groundwater pumping ledto land subsidence of up to 1 meter perdecade, resulting in cracked pavements,broken water and sewerage pipes, intrusion ofsea water, and increased flooding in low-lyingareas. To counteract this, major improvementswere made to the piped water system in centralBangkok, with good results. Many wells (whichoccupied valuable property) are no longerused, and groundwater levels recovered bybetween 8 and 18 meters during the 1980s,

There is a second important way in whichhouseholds' efforts to compensate forinadequate public water supplies often degradethe environment. To correct for unreliable waterquality, many households boil their drinkingwater. This practice is widespread, particularlyin Asia In the city of Cebu in the Philippines, forexample, about half of all families boil theirdrinking water (with the proportion actuallyhigher for families who obtain their water froman unreliable, chlorinated piped supply!)

On the one hand, this practice is, indeed veryeffective in protecting the family from the effectof poor water quality. On the other hand,because this practice is so common, and

because it takes a lot of energy to boil water,the energy costs incurred are enormous. InJakarta it is estimated that over $50 million isspent each year on boiling water for domesticconsumption, an amount that is equivalent toabout 1 % of the GDP of the city! Because thequantities of fuel consumed for this purpose areso large, and because firewood, coal and cokeare often used for this purpose, this practice(and, indirectly, the inadequate water supplysystems) makes a significant contribution todeforestation, urban air pollution and the otherenergy-induced environmental effects.

(b) The effects of environmentalquality on the provision of watersupply services:

Many cities and towns face increasingdifficulties in obtaining sufficient quantities ofwater of adequate quality. Without effectivemanagement of water resources, the cost ofthese supplies have risen and will continue torise. In Mexico City, where much water is usedinefficiently in nearby irrigated areas, the cityhas to contemplate pumping water over 1,000meters elevation into the valley of Mexico; inUma, upstream pollution has increasedtreatment costs by about 30 percent; inShanghai, water intakes have already beenmoved upstream more than 40 kilometers at acost of around $300 million; in Amman, themost recent works involve pumping water up1,200 meters from a site about 40 kilometersfrom the city. A recent analysis of the costs ofraw water for urban areas in World Bank-financed projects (Figure 3) shows that the unitcost of additional water from the "next" schemeis more than double the cost of water from thecurrent scheme in most cases, and more thantriple in several cases.

(c) The effects on health

The health benefits from better water andsanitation services are huge. When serviceswere improved in the industrial countries in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, the impacton health was revolutionary. To cite just two ofmany well-documented examples:. Life expectancy in French cities increasedfrom about thirty-two years in 1850 to aboutforty-five years in 1900-with the timing ofchanges corresponding closely to changes

Briscoe paper for Revolte Symposium

Figure 3: Supplying water to urban areas: current cost and projected future costs(1988 dollars oer cubic meter of raw water)

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— Future cost is three times cunerü cost

• * 'Future cost is twice current cost

•"Rature cost equals current cost:

in water supply and wastewater disposal;. In a natural experiment in the Ohio RiverValley in the early 20th century, some citiesused untreated water while others treated theirwater. Over a 10-year period, death rates fromtyphoid fever were constant in the formergroup, but declined by over 80% in cities whichtreated their water.

Today, as shown in Tables 1 and 2 (overleaf),adequate water and sanitation services are justas vital. It is estimated that if all people usedadequate water and sanitation facilities, therewould be about 2 million fewer childhooddeaths from diarrhea each year. Box 1(overleaf) describes the improvements whichare critical for improving health.

(d) The effects on productivity

Improved environmental sanitation haseconomic benefits. Consider the case ofinvestments for sewage collection in Santiago,Chile. Their principal justification was the needto reduce the extraordinarily high incidence oftyphoid fever in the city. Á secondary

justification was the need to maintain access tothe markets of industrialized countries forChile's increasingly important exports of fruitand vegetables. To ensure the sanitary qualityof these exports, it was essential to stop usingraw wastewater in their production. Given thecurrent cholera epidemic in Latin America, thiswas prescient. In just the first ten weeks of thecholera epidemic in Peru, losses from reducedagricultural exports and tourism were estimatedat $1 billion-more than three times the amountinvested in water supply and sanitation servicesin the country during the 1980s.

Improved access to water and sanitation alsoyields direct economic benefits. For many ruralpeople, getting water is time-consuming andheavy work, taking up to 15 percent of women'stime. Improvement projects have reduced thetime substantially. In a village on the MuedaPlateau in Mozambique, for instance, theaverage time that women spent collecting waterwas reduced from 120 to 25 minutes a day.That is a gain of some kind in people's well-being, whether the time is used to cultivatecrops, tend a home garden, trade in the market,keep small livestock, care for children, or even

Brisco» paper for Rovolle Symposium

pages

Table 1 : The effects of improved water and sanitation on sickness

DiseaseDiarrheaAscariasisGuinea wormSchistosomiasisTrachoma

Incidence:cases/year(millions)

900

Prevalence:# infected(millions)

9004

200500

Median reductiondue to anenvironmentalsanitation Aimprovement(percent) :

•y; .;. 2 2 % ; j : | , : ••-•• . .

" • • : . : . A : ; : - . 2 8 % - ' ; : - ; : ' : V : - V

::::•:. 7 3 % ; ; í ; : ' : " •

'•••^. : 5 0 % -.•

Table 2: Typical effects of improved water supply andsanitation on diarrhea morbidity

ConditionsImproved water qualityImproved water availabilityl^pro^edwaitelrquaiity^^S

Improved excreta disposal

Median reduction incases of diarrhea

16%25%

li- :--l. ;37%?i,: '.''V,,':22%

Box 1 .'Specific Investments that matter for health

The potential health benefits from improved water and sanitation services are huge. What improvementsmust made to secure these benefits?

. With water quality,there are two key points. First, contrary to common belief, contamination of water inthe home is relatively unimportant--.What' matters is whether the water coming out of the tap or pump iscontaminated. Second, in most developing countries the imperative is to get from "bad' quality (over1,000 fecal coliforms per 100 ml, say) to "moderate" quality (below 10 fecal coliforms per 100 ml), notnecessarily to meet the stringent quality standards of industrialized countries;

.With water availability', as long as families have to go out of the yard tò collect water, the quantities usedwill remain low (typically between 15 and 30 liters per capita per day). The use of water for personalhygiene usually increases only when availability rises to around 80 liters per capita per day, and generallydepends on getting the water delivered to the yard or house.

. With excreta disposal, it is necessary to distinguish among household and neighborhood effects. Forthe household, the health impacts of improved sanitation facilities depend only on getting the excreta outof the house, and are thus similar whether family members use an improved pit latrine, a cess pooloverflowing into a street drain, or a conventional sewerage system: For the neighborhood, the key is theremoval of excreta, a task done well by a wide range of technologies; but badly by many commonly usedsystems juchas night soil collection and unemptied septic tanks); B|cause all the fecatóral transmissionroutes become much more important where people live in close proximity to each Other, the ill effects ofpoor environmental sanitation are greatest in high-density urban settlements;


pagç 6'

rest. Because these time savings are clearlyperceived by users, they mean that users arewilling to pay substantial amounts (asdiscussed later in this paper) for easier access.

In the absence of format services, people haveto provide their own services, often at high cost.In Jakarta, for instance, about 800,000households have installed septic tanks, eachcosting several hundred dollars (not countingthe cost of the land). And in many cities andtowns large numbers of people buy water fromvendors. A review of vending in sixteen citiesshows that the unit cost of vended water isalways much higher-typically from 4 to 100times, with a median of about twelve-than thecost of a unit of water from a piped city supply.The situation in Uma, Peru, is typical. A poorfamily pays a vendor $3 per cubic meter, whichis more than twenty times what a middle-classfamily pays for water via a house connection.Thus, although a poor family uses only one-sixth as much water as a middle-class family,the monthly water bill for a poor family is threetimes that of the middle-class family. In theslums around many cities, water costs the poora large part of household income -18 percent

in Onitsha, Nigeria, 20 percent in Port-au-Prince, for example. Because so many peoplerely on vendors, these expenditures are huge.In Onitsha, for example, households payvendors enough to provide for two-thirds of thefull costs of providing piped water to 80 percentof the population.

The economic costs of compensating forunreliable services ~ by building in-housestorage facilities, sinking wells or installingbooster pumps (which can draw contaminatedgroundwater into the water distribution system)- are also substantial. In Tegucigalpa,Honduras, for example, the sum of suchinvestments is large enough to double thenumber of deep wells providing water to thecity. And the costs of compensating for poorwater quality are great, too. In Bangladesh, forexample, boiling drinking water would take 11percent of the income of a family in the lowestquartile. With the outbreak of cholera in Peru,the Ministry of Health has urged all residents toboil drinking water for 10 minutes. The cost ofdoing this would amount to 29 percent of theaverage household income in a squattersettlement.


II: WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE?

Investments in sanitation and water offer higheconomic, social and environmental returns.Universal provision of these services shouldand could become a reality in the cominggeneration. But the next four decades will seeurban populations in developing countriesrising by 160 percent, and domestic demand forwater rising fivefold. Current approaches willnot meet these demands, and there is a realpossibility that the numbers unserved couldactually rise substantially, even while aquifersare depleted and rivers degraded. Theremainder of this paper suggests that there arefour key policy changes which need to bemade.

(a) Managing water resourcesbetter

The allocation of water between agriculture,industry and domestic users is politicallydifficult, but if mismanaged, will drive up costsand reduce the quality available for households.Meeting domestic needs will raise difficultissues of allocation and management. Ascountries and regions approach the limits oftheir supplies, it will become essential toallocate water efficiently among competinguses. For domestic users, an equally importantissue will be the way water quality is managed.A city that discharges untreated sewage into ariver imposes additional costs on other usersdownstream.

When there was little competition for water, itwas (correctly) used in large quantities foractivities in which the value of a unit of waterwas relatively low. In many countries thedominant 'high-volume, low-value* user becameirrigated agriculture. Today about 73 percent ofall water withdrawals (and higher proportions ofconsumptive use) are for irrigation. This shareis even higher in low-income countries. In mostcountries this water is provided at heavilysubsidized prices, with users seldom payingmore than 10 percent of the operating costs.

As demand by all three sectors increases,governments find it hard to change the existingarrangements. The allocation of water in allcountries is a complex issue, governed by legaland cultural traditions. Users typically havewell-established rights. Strong sectoraldivisions between (often competing) ministriesadd to the difficulty of managing waterresources efficiently. Reallocation is acontentious and ponderous process, generallyresponding only with long lags to changes indemand. Even though agricultural use of waterhas the lowest value per cubic meter, there isstrong political opposition to diverting waterfrom agriculture to other sectors. The result isthat in many countries, industrialized anddeveloping alike, large volumes of water areused to add little economic value in irrigatedagriculture, while cities and industries, whichwould gladly pay more, cannot get enough.

This mismatch is most striking in the areasaround large cities. In the Western UnitedStates, for example, farmers in Arizona pay lessthan 1 cent for a cubic meter of water, whileresidents of the city of Phoenix pay about 25cents for a cubic meter of raw water. In theindustrial heartland of China around Beijing andTianjin, 65 percent of water is used relativelyinefficiently for low-value irrigation, while hugeexpenditures are contemplated to bring waterfrom other river basins to the cities.

Paradoxically, there is good news in thesedistortions. Their very size indicates that urbanshortages could be met with only modestreallocation. In Arizona, for instance, thepurchase of the water rights from just one farmis sufficient to provide water for tens ofthousands of urban dwellers. Because of thelow value of water in irrigated agriculture, theloss of this marginal water has little overall effecton farm output. To help such transfers, newmarket-driven reallocation methods have beendeveloped. Thus the city of Los Angeles cameto an agreement with farmers in the CentralValley of California whereby the city paid forimprovements which reduced losses in the

Brisco» paper for Rovello Symposium

irrigation canals. For the city this was a gooddeal, since the unit cost of the released waterwas less than half that of the cheapestalternative; and the farmers got cash without acut in their net quantity of water. In anotherinstance, when a recent drought dangerouslyreduced available water, the State of Californiaset up a voluntary 'Water Bank", whichpurchased water from farmers and sold it tourban areas. The farmers made a profit byselling the water for more than it was worth tothem, while the cities got water at a cost wellbelow that of other sources of supply.

In developing countries, too, a start is beingmade in applying innovative water resourcemanagement methods. In the North ChinaPlain, the State Science and TechnologyCommission determined that the economic rateof return to a cubic meter of water used foragriculture was less than 10 percent of thereturn to municipal and industrial users. Onceagricultural and urban users accepted that theyhad to talk to each other and had to look atwater as an economic commodity with a price,progress -- including reallocation - was made.And Jakarta has been reasonably successful inreducing the overpumping of its aquifers byregistering groundwater users (especiallycommercial and industrial establishments), andby introducing a groundwater levy.

The striking feature of these "market-based"réallocation methods is that they are voluntary,they benefit both the buyers and sellerseconomically, they reduce the environmentalproblems resulting from profligate water use inirrigation and they reduce the need for moredams. Up to now these methods have beenapplied primarily in industrialized countries, butthey show a way forward for developingcountries.

Industries and households also need to begiven incentives to use water efficiently. Cities,like farmers, have tended to take demand asgiven and to see the task as increasing suppliesto meet it. As was the case with energy twentyyears ago, little attention is paid to conservationand demand management in the water sector.This is both economically and environmentallyunsound. Consider the case of Washington,D.C. In the 1960s, the U.S. governmentconcluded that sixteen dams and over $400

million were needed to meet the water needs ofthe metropolitan area. Because of resistancefrom environmentalists to the construction ofthe dams, the plan had to be reconsidered.Eventually the number of dams was reduced toone, and the total cost of the scheme to $30million. The key changes were a revised plan formanaging demand during droughts, and moreefficient operating rules. Once again, thisillustrates that better economics and a betterenvironment are compatible.

Experience in industrialized and developingcountries alike shows the potential for usingwater more cost-effectively in industry. In theUnited States freshwater withdrawals bymanufacturing industries by the year 2000 areexpected to be 62 percent less thanwithdrawals in 1977, primarily because of theincreased costs industries have to pay fordisposing of industrial wastewater. In SaoPaulo, Brazil, the imposition of effluent chargesinduced reductions of between 42 percent and62 percent in water demand from threeindustrial plants. For Beijing, Figure 4 (overleaf)shows that a variety of conservation measuresin industries and households could releaselarge quantities of water at a substantially lowerunit cost than that of the next supplyaugmentation project.

A particularly important conservation alternativeis reclamation of wastewater. Waterreclamation for urban, industrial and agriculturaluse is attractive both to improve theenvironment and to reduce the costs of watersupply. Reclaimed wastewater has been usedfor flushing toilets in residential and commercialbuildings in Japan and Singapore for manyyears. A recent reclamation scheme in theVallejo area of Mexico City (Box 2, overleaf)illustrates the great potential, both economicand environmental, of wastewater reuse (and,to anticipate a theme developed later in thischapter, the scope for the private sector).

At present, in most countries the managementof water resources is fragmented (there are nomechanisms whereby the effects of one use ofwater on another potential user are signalled)and "command and control" (since mostallocations are by administrative fiat). Thechallenge is to replace this system with onewhich recognizes the unitary nature of the

Briscoe paper for Revsll» Symposium

Figure 4: Conserving water as an alternative to expanding supply In Beijing(discounted cost in dollars per cubic meter)

• ;••.• • • i v i ' f r d o m e s t i c u s e s • Y ¡j:•.•.•:\-' ; .• • ::

:

: (total savings: 15 percent ofcurrent domestic consumption)

:£>;-^y,F':'u;':: Industry'. • •.. i KV- •'.;•; •: (total saving»: 33 percent ofcurrent industrial consumption)

' Cost of next water devdíçiníint project:-t""'"":"L'"r":íl"': |'r: :.: ::•.'..."..;. .:" :.'••: •'. ' :^•:-^'u '^rr^'U*Iv^rT*^'^*^^T^*M^^^ iA^Wh^-* i> ' :- '*1^"^yi*^^™^'^^!:^^^y^r*-w^<¿i&w¿<,**¿¿w¿-¿

:.; Quantity conserved (tnillions of cubic meters per year)250

B Improved efficiency in public {acuitiesn Leakage reduction program :0 Recydingof cooling water usedin

air conditioningü Irtótaflation of water-effidentfhish toilets

0 increased recycling-of coding water: in manufacturingD Recycling of cooling water from

power plants

H Wfastewater recycling :

Box 2 Environmental improvement, water resources management and the private sector In Mexico

In 1989, faced with rising water prices and potential water shortages, a group of companies in the Vallejoarea of Méjcicò City sought an aiternative to water supplied by the public; agency. About the same time theMexican government decided to involve the private sector in water supply and wastewater treatment.

tïie iridustriàlists realized that, if sewage flows could be adequately treated, this could be a cost-effectiveand reliable source of industriai water (and, incidentally, improve the environment by treating wastes andreducing the need for new water supplies). Twenty-six Vàllejo companies organized a new, for-prof it firm,Aguas Industriales de Vallejo (AN), to rehabilitate an old municipal wastewater treatment plant. Eachshareholder company contributed equity based upon its water usage requirements, with total equitytotalling $900;000.

AIV operates the plant under a 10-year concession from the government. The plant now provides 60liters/second to shareholders and 30 liters/second to the government as payment for the concession. Theconcession agreement gives AIV the right to withdraw up to 200 liters/second of wastewater from themunicipal trunk sewer. AIV has plans to double the plant's capacity within five years at an estimated costof $1.5 million. AIV provides treated water to shareholder companies at a price equivalent to 75 percent ofthe water tariff charged by the government (currently $0.95 per cubic meter);

Brlscoe paper for Revelle Symposium

page,10

resource and its economic value, and whichrelies heavily on prices and other incentives toencourage efficient use of water.

(b) Providing services thatpeople want and are willing topay for

During the United Nations Drinking Water andSanitation Decade of the 1980s coverageincreased. But about 1 billion people do nothave an adequate water supply and about 1.7billion people do not have adequate sanitationfacilities. The quality of service often remainspoor. In Latin America, for example, the levelsof leakage and pipe breakage are four timesand twenty times higher than is normal inindustrialized countries. In Lima, Peru, 70percent of the water distribution districtsprovide inadequate water pressure. In Mexico,20 percent of water supply systems haveunreliable chlorination facilities.

What has been done:

Developing countries cannot afford to provideall people with in-house piped water andsewerage connections. The policy has usuallybeen to concentrate primarily on the(subsidized) provision of water, often via houseconnections for the better-off, and standpipesor handpumps for the poor.

Urban consumers in most industrializedcountries pay all of the recurrent costs(operations, maintenance, and debt service) forboth water supply and sewerage services.They also pay most of the capital costs of watersupply and a large (typically over half) andrising portion of the capital costs of sewerage.The limited data available on rural areas ofindustrialized countries suggest that subsidiesare somewhat higher, but also decreasingsharply. Solid waste collection and disposalfacilities are usually financed by localgovernment, with revenues from local taxes and¡ntragovernmental transfers.

In developing countries, by contrast,consumers pay far less. A recent review ofBank-financed projects showed that theeffective price charged for water is only about35 percent of the average cost of supplying it.

The proportion of total project financinggenerated by utilities points in the samedirection: internal cash generation accounts foronly 8 percent of project costs in Asia, 9percent in Sub-Saharan Africa, but more inLatin America and the Caribbean (21 percent)and in the Middle East and North Africa (35percent). Unsatisfactory as these figures are,things are getting worse: internal cashgeneration financed 34 percent of costs inWorld Bank-financed projects in 1988, 22percent in 1989,18 percent in 1990 and just 10percent in 1991.

Much the same applies with solid waste.Although household collection fees aresuccessfully charged in some cities (includingCairo, Guatemala City, and Merida), in mostcases these costs are met from local revenues,often supplemented by intergovernmentaltransfers. These expenditures typically accountfor between 30 percent and 50 percent of allmunicipal spending. Only a small proportion(typically 5 percent in developing countries,compared with 25 percent in industrializedcountries) of all spending on solid waste isdirected to its safe disposal.

A new approach:

In urban areas there is abundant evidence thatmost people want on-plot water supplies ofreasonable reliability, and most are willing topay the full cost of these services. In someareas this standard solution will have to beadjusted, and special efforts made toaccommodate poor people. In Latin America,and more recently in Morocco, utilities havehelped poor families to install a connection andin-house plumbing by giving them the option ofpaying over several years. Another option is a"social tariff, whereby the better-off cross-subsidize the poor. Properly executed, suchpolicies are both sensible (since the poor userelatively little water) and compassionate. Butthere are dangers. Social tariffs can lead to ageneral spread of subsidies. And theassignment of noncommercial objectives to apublic enterprise generally has an insidiouseffect on the achievement of all its objectives-commercial and noncommercial alike.

It is widely assumed that the demand situationin rural areas is quite different, that there people

Bríseos paper for Revelle Symposium

have only a "basic need" which can be met via apublic tap or handpump. However, a recentmulti-country World Bank study of rural waterdemand (Box 3) found that most rural peoplewant, and are willing to pay for, a relatively highlevel of service (yard taps). As shown in Figure5, they will pay substantially more if that serviceis reliable. And, as shown in Figure 6, morepeople will make use of improved watersupplies if innovative financing mechanisms areemployed.

Twenty years of experience with the provision ofwater in rural Thailand (Box 4, overleaf), showshow it is possible to break out of a "low-levelequilibrium trap" (in which a low level of servicesis provided, for which willingness to pay andthus revenues are low, and where operationconsequently deteriorates) to a "high-levelequilibrium" in which users get a high level ofservice, pay for it, and maintain the desiredsystem.

Figure 5: How reliability of supply affects willingness to pay for piped water: Punjab, Pakistan

(percentage of households)

• • '•; improved reliability— B c ^ g reliability

Figure 6: How spreading connection costs over time affects willingness to pay for piped water: Kerala, India

Connection, rate(percentage of households)

ivo '

> Tariff paid by customer{rupee» per month) r:

""Col lect ion cost amortizedmm:- Connection costas lump sum

Bríseos paper for Revelia Symposium

Box 3: The water services that rural people want and are willing to pay for

The World Bank in conjunction with other agencies recently completed a study of rural water demand inBrazil, Hàjti, lridia¿ Nigeria, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe;: "The study suggests that, from thisperspectiyë^ttiere arèifour broad categories

^ : ' I n which willingness to pay for private connections¡Ishigh,ana'willingnesstopay forpublic water points is low; :": • yÇ:Q:;y;..ï : y^--\ :•:£ :;:i:.:; y-- -: ;•;.;•. ' l , : ^ r l \ - M l . 0 : c y W • S;l-i:-íl :• • •. i:-: : ::-ivi •••: •• • :'i i i.: - : ::: il ï-: : l'i • :.': ; : ; Such communities offer exciting possibilities because people want and are willing to pay the full costsof reliable water service delivered wapriv^^

i of free p u ^appropriate^strategy is tdi offer and even encourage (specfficálly; by am :monthly' Vyater bills): piïyàte connections, tp recover all costs via thé tariff; and to -deliver à reliable service.A striking finding from the World Bank study is that many more communities fall into this category than iscommonly assumed, probably including many communities in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and

. . . L i a t i f t ' A m e r i c a a r i d N o r t h p r i e s t ••:.' '' • . . ' : i : ' . ' : • : : • • . : i - • :• .• ::--;•. ••;•:•••.::• C ' . : : ; : . : • • • ; : ; i : : : ; : . : : : ' • ^ l i i : : ; : : : : - a ^ . : ; / . - . : : 0 O : - • • :;,::^:,•.'•• ::::::;.;:•:• :.•..

type II Ccinmunitiés: In which only a minority of households ar& willing to pay the full costs of privateconnections,;bútthemajorityare willing to pay the full costs of pubtic water points: ••.;:•.

While the overall:Willingness to pay for improved water service is considerable in these communities,users vary greatly in their willingness to pay for different levels of service. In these villages the provision offree public \yaterppiintsÇsuux asstàndpipes, wells or boreholes) Wòúld^for private cphriectiohsv With a heavy reliance on public water points; there must be some charge forwaterfrom these in order to finance the system. Here the greatest challenge is to devise revenuecollection systemsthat are sensitive to peoples' preferences aboutwhen they want to buy water and howthey want to payfPF .it Kiosks appear to be an attractive and flexible optionwho wish to have house connections should be able¡to do so? butirriust have metered connections andmust p ^ the full cost;i:M

aoTànimpro^edserviced i : l : ^:^;-:;;":^;^--: :;V;,;;:":;.:^:-:.::;::i:;:;:;r :'vi:- :.:' • • :':.-: :: • •

These are typically poor communies in arid areas. As in Type If viHimproved water service^s high (as;a proportioh of iricome). The distihctlori is that thé costs of supply aresohigh (due to a combination of aridity and low population densities), thatImproved systems wil lnotbebuilt and operated without subsidies. Given the high priority which people give to improved water supply,if transfers are available from central government of from foreign donors, the households of the communitywould typically choose to spend the funds on an improved water supply;: The primary service offered in¿uch cornmiinities would be public taps; wells or boreholes, altrtough meterèd yard taps should be^ l l o v ^ i h the c ^ e « ^ pipedtypically found in arid areas in South Asia and Africa. ;;: ;:: -0: 'f^M-l ; i : ::::t :i:y "•[ ¿00-':l^ • :••} ':. : \ [ • ': ': '•'. •• -••/:

TOless satisfactory by the population or (b) in which communities have come to see it as government'sfinancial responsibility. In such; communities self-fihahced improved water supplies are not feasible.Given the loW priority afforded improved water suppfy, available subsidies could be better used inproviding other; rn^water supply policy in such cases is simply to dohothihg.Forthe second category; once governmentpaternalism ceases, it may be that communities would express a willingness to pay and would become a

¡ Í | i ^ h : i:0 ' ' 0 M 0 C


Box 4 Breaking the "low-level equilibrium trap" In Northeast Thailand

A well-documented case in Northeast Thailand, covering a twenty-year period, demonstrates theimportance of discovering what users of rural water services want, rather than assuming the answers.

Since the people were poor, the initial project aimed to provide protected water at the lowest possiblecost Because groundwater is abundant in the region, the technology chosen was handpumps. After fiveyears; most of the haridpumps were not working, and people's water use habits were largely unchanged.In a follow-up» phase, motor pomps provided piped water at community standpipes. Again the projectfailed: Fjyeyeàrs after implementation, 50 percent of the systems were not working at all; and ar ioth^percent operated intermittently. • . •• ••:-ï-'::;-v:y:-ï^:^;ï::'';::.:::--ï':'^';V--:::---:: :;\--. ['•' "". Ti-:-C¿ -^ ^- y : -

Consistent with conventional assumptions, the failures were attributed to technologies that were toocomplex to maintain and to the inability of poor villagers to pay for improved supplies. Gradually, however,it became apparent that the main problem was not the capabilities of the villagers, but the fact that theservice being offered was not what they wanted. They did not want handpumps, which were notconsidered an improvement over the traditional rope-and-bucket system. And standpipes were no closerthan theirtraditionai sources and so offered no obvious benefits. Only piped water to yardtaps could meetpeople's aspirations^

In the next project yardtaps were allowed, with the users paying the full costs of connection. Five yearslater the verdict was in: 90 percent of the systems were functioning reliably; 80 percent of the people wereserved by yardtaps; meters had been installed and locally adapted charging systems had beendeveloped. Not only had the systems been well maintained, but because the service was so popular,many systems had extended distribution lines to previously unserved areas.

In other words; in terms of the typology discussed in Box 3, when these; (poor) people were treated as"Type IV baskëtcasës, the cycle was the familiar low-lëvel equilibriui^ trap. When they were treated àsTType I" communities,the cycle was broken and a high-level equilibrium established.

Increase Investments in sanitation

Public investment in water supply andsanitation accounted for 10 percent of totalpublic investment in developing countries, orabout 0.5 percent of GOP. Spending onsewerage and sanitation accounts forsubstantially less than one-fifth of lending inWorld Bank-financed projects. Most of this hasbeen for sewage collection, with little spent ontreatment. In most developing countries muchless than 10 percent of sewage is treated.Similarly, only a small proportion (typically 5percent in developing countries, compared with25 percent in industrial countries) of allspending on solid wastes is directed to theirsafe disposal.

Take account of demand:

There is abundant evidence that urban familiesare willing to pay substantial amounts for theremoval of excreta and wastewater from theirhousehold environment. People want privacy,convenience and status; polluted water smellsunpleasant and fosters mosquitos; and theinstallation of sewers typically increasesproperty prices. As with water supply, so withsanitation: where public provision is absent,people pay significant amounts for privatelyprovided services. Even in poor cities, theamounts paid are considerable. In Kumasi inGhana, for example, large recurrentexpenditures are incurred by those who usepublic latrines and bucket latrines-about 2.5percent and 1 percent, respectively, of familyincome. In Kumasi and Ouagadougou, BurkinaFaso, families are willing to pay about 2 percent

Briscoe paper lor RevBlle Symposium

of household income for an improved sanitationsystem, or roughly the amount paid for waterand for electricity. The examples of Orangi,Pakistan, and Northeast Brazil discussed laterin this paper show that even poor families arewilling to pay the willingness of households topay substantial amounts for water-bornesewerage collection systems.

Expand the menu of supply options:

A vital element of a demand-driven sanitationstrategy is expanding the menu of services fromwhich users can choose.

In city centers there is no alternative towaterborne systems. Here developers are oftenallowed to build without investing in the publicsewer system. Even in relatively poor cities thisproblem is not insoluble. For example inFortaleza, a poor city in Northeast Brazil,developers of all high-rise buildings arerequired to, and do, install package sewagecollection and treatment systems. The pointhere is not that this is a good technical solution,but that developers can easily absorb suchcosts and pass them on to those who purchaseunits in these buildings, even in a relatively poorcity.

Beyond the urban core, however, conventionalsewerage systems (with average householdcosts anywhere from $300 to $1,000) are tooexpensive for most developing countries. Inrecent decades there have been efforts todevelop technological alternatives. Most of thiswork has been on the on-site disposal ofexcreta. Pour-flush latrines and ventilatedimproved pit (VIP) latrines are often thetechnologies of choice-they provide goodservice (privacy, few odors) at reasonable cost(typically less than $100 per unit), and theirinstallation and functioning does not depend onthe municipality or other organization. At evenlower cost, of course, there are yet simplerimprovements (such as the latrine slab programwhich proved so successful in Mozambique).

For a variety of reasons - high housingdensities, impermeable soils and the need todispose of considerable quantities of domesticwastewater - on-site solutions do not function

well in many urban areas. Sewerage andwastewater collect in the street and low-lyingareas, creating major aesthetic and healthproblems. And in many settings people aspireto "the real thing' (waterborne sewerage).

Current sanitation choices include a RollsRoyce (conventional sewerage), a motorcycle(an improved latrine), and a bicycle (anunimproved latrine). What is missing is theVolkswagen-something that provides much thesame service as the Rolls Royce but whichmany more people can afford. Several types of"sanitation Volkswagen' are being developed:. Effluent sewerage is a hybrid between aseptic tank and a conventional seweragesystem. Its distinctive feature is a tank locatedbetween the house sewer and the street sewer,which retains the solids, thereby allowingsmaller sewers to be laid at flatter gradients andwith fewer manholes. Such systems have beenwidely used in small towns in the United Statesand Australia, and in Argentina, Brazil,Colombia, India, Mozambique and Zambia The(limited) cost data suggest that solids-freesewerage costs about 20 percent less thanconventional sewerage.. Simplified sewerage, developed in Sao Paulo,allows smaller, shallower, flatter sewers, withfewer manholes. This simplified design worksas well as conventional sewerage but costabout 30 percent less. It is now routinely usedin Brazil.. The Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi (describedin Box 5, overleaf) adapted the principles ofeffluent sewerage and simplified sewerage tothe realities of a hilly squatter settlement inKarachi. The result-again, not just the result ofclever engineering-was drastic reductions inthe cost of sewers, from the $1,000 perhousehold which was standard in Karachi toless than $100 per household (excluding thecost of the trunk sewers). The achievement isextraordinary-about 600,000 people are nowserved with self-financed sewers in Orangi.. The condominial system (described in Box 6,overleaf), has been developed and applied inNortheast Brazil and is now being used in low-income urban areas throughout the country. Itcomprises shallow, small-diameter backyardsewers laid at flat gradients and costs about 70percent less than a conventional system.


Box 5: Innovative sewerage In a Karachi squatter settlement: The Orangl pilot project

In the early 1980s; Akhtër Hameed Khan, a world-reriownëd cpmmùnity organizer; began working in theslums of Karachi, He asked what problem he could help resolve. He was told that "the streets were filledwith excreta arid waste water, making movement difficult and creating enormous health hazards"; Whatdid the people: want, and how did they intend to get it, he asked. What they wanted was clear -- "peopleaspired to a traditional sewerage system.;, it would be difficult to;get them to finance anything else." Andohow they would get it, too, was clear -they would have Dr. Khan persuadethe; Karachi Development ;Authority (KDA) tp provide it fprfree as it did (or so they perceived) to the richer áreas of the city¿:

;Dr: Khan thenspent months going with representatwèsfrp^ the community petitioning thethe service. Once it was clear that this wpuld never happen; Dr. Khan was ready to work; with the ;community jn finding| alternatives. ; (He would later describe this fir^did in drahgj i - liberating, as hé put it; the people frbrh thé demobilizing myths of government promises.)

With a small amount of core external funding the Orangi Pilot Project (ÒPP) was started. The services thatpeople wanted Were clear, the task was to reduce the costs so that these were affordable and to developorganizations that could provide arid operate the systems: Ontrie technical side, the achievements of theOPP architects and engineers were remarkable and innovative. Coupled with an elimination of corruption,and the provision of labor by community members, the costs (in-house sanitary latrine and house seweron the plot; and underground sewers in the lanes and streets) are less than $100 per household.

The (related) organizational achievements are equally impressive. The OPP staff has played a catalyticrole ~ they explain the benefits of sanitation and the technical possibilities to residents and conductresearch and provide technical assistance. The OPP staff never handled the community's moneys (Thetotal costs;t>f OPP'soperations amounted, even in the project's èàrtyyëars, to less than i^perc^amount invested by the community.) The households* responsibilities include financing their share of thecosts; participating ini cònstructiònv and election of à "lane managed hòtypicàliy represents about ;fifteenhouseholds). The lane committees, in turn, elect members of neighborhood comm^ ^around 60^ houses) who manage the secondary sewera; The early successes achieved tycreated à'sh^bàli'ëftect in párasëwerage^stém.; Asthé^ppressurevon themunicipality to provide municipal fundsfor the construction of secbridary and primarys e w e r s ; ".•'.•• '•. • . • • . : • • • • •"-• • •;

The Orangi Pilot Project has led to the provision of sewerage to over 600,000 poor people in Karachi andto attempts by at least one progressive municipal development authority in Pakistan to follow the OPPmethod and, in the words of Arif Hasan t o have government behave like an NGO." Even in Karachi, themayor has;riòjw^ formally accepted theÍ principle of •internal" developrhënt by thé residents and "external'development Oncluding the trunk sewers and treatment) by the municipality.

(c) Investing in waste disposal:

There is an important difference between"private goods" (including water supply, andeven wastewater and solid waste collection), inwhich the primary benefits accrue to individualhouseholds and waste treatment and disposai,in which the benefits accrue to the communityat large. In the case of the former, willingnessto pay is an appropriate guide to the level ofservice to be provided, and the main source offinance should be direct charges to the users.In the case of waste disposal, however, publicfinancing is essential. Governments that

subsidize 'private* water supply and wastewatercollection services are left with less money tofinance treatment and disposal services.

No developing country, however, will have theluxury of collecting and treating wastewaterfrom all households. Because the costs ofmeeting such goals are extremely high, even inindustrialized countries the full population is notserved by wastewater treatment facilities. Forexample, coverage is only 66 percent inCanada and 52 percent in France. In makingthe inevitable choices (about place and level oftreatment), the best ratio of benefits to costs will

Briscoe paper for Revelia Symposium

pagre 76

Box 6: Innovative sewerage in Northeast Brazil: The "condominlal" system

The "condominial" system is the brain-child of Jose Carlos de Melo, a socially committed engineerfromRecife. The name 'condominjal' was given for two reasons. First, a block of houses was treated like ahorizontal apartment building - or "condominíaMn Portuguese (see Boxfigure 1). Second, "Condominial*was a popular Brazilian soap opera and associated with the best in urban lifël As is evident in Box Figures 1and 2, the result is arádically different layout (with a shorter grid of smaller and shallower feeder" sewersrunning through the backyards and with the effects of shallower connections to the mains rippiingithrough •the system). These innovations cut construction costs to between 20 percent and 30; percent óf those of a

' c o n v e n t i o n a l 1 s y s t e m . I . : • • ' . : ••• '• •'•• \ "\:•._•.'" - , , :: •. : 7 v • ; • / . - • y - - . . ' \ ;v•'• ' ' - . . i • ' / • • ' • ' • ; . . ; : - . • • / • . ; -: • : :•• ' • •• . : : .: '• ; •• . • : , ; - ' : ' '

••• :..-'''• I 7 } ¿ ; B ó x f i g u r e 1 -:-. • .. ;•.:;: : ;.:. " . ' : ; o... ; •,•;'.•..•.....;:.: Ç ^ : à a x f i g u r e - 2 - j . ' . ; ' '/. •'.-..-./.' ...'^ -, • '

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m*tií?J¡':~¡-

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5treetsewer [:y:-::yí¿House sewer .v:v:;:::¿;ií;iBackyard toüet \yMM

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The more fundamental and radical innovation, however, is the active involvement of the population iris:.crKXtôing..|j$rl^are t h ^ fámiii^ can cHcosë: (¡y t<ï õ^ •convention^ water^rhesystemchooses to cpnnea to a condominial system; it has to pay a conne«iòri charge (financed by the:wat¿^:-';^company) c£:SiBy^^ if óri the other hand, it wants acoriventiorial connection, if has to pay an initial cost of about 3X and a monthly tariff of 3Y (reflecting thédifferent capital and operating costs). Families are free to continue with their current system (which usuallymeans a holding tank discharging into an open street drain). In mosteases, however, those families whoinitially choose not to connect eventually end up connecting. Either they succumb to heavy pressurefromtheir neighbors. Or they find the build-up of wastewater in arid around their houses intolerable once the(connected)^neighbors fill in the rest of the open drain.

Individual households are responsible for maintaining the feeder sewers, with the formal agency tending tothe trunk mains only;; This Increases the communities' sense of: responsibility for the system. Also, themisuse of any portion of the feeder system (by, say, putting solid waste down the toilet) soon shows up in ablockage in tftendghbòfs portion of thé sewer; this means rapid; direct arid informed feedback to the:misuserl This virtually eliminates the need to 'educate* the users of the system in th& do's and don'ts; andresults in fewer blockages than in conventional systems. Finally, because of the greatly reduced iresponsibility of the utility; its operating costs^are shai^naducedi:: i;;; ;

The œndominiàlsystern is nciw providing service to hundredsBrazil.: The dàngéri hoWeyër; is that the clever engïnèeririg is seeni às •the system1. Where the communityarid organizational aspects have beerr missing, the technology has worked poorly (as in Joinville, SantaCatarina) or not at ah (as iri the Baixada Fluminense in Rib de Janeiro);

Bríscoe paper for Revelia Symposium

pagan

usually be achieved by concentrating mostpublic funds on waste treatment in large cities,and especially those with substantial"downstream1 populations.

In recent decades some important advanceshave been made in innovative sewagetreatment processes. At the lower end of thespectrum is the stabilization pond, a technologythat has proved robust, easy to operate and(where land is not costly) relatively inexpensive.A promising intermediate (in both cost andoperational complexity) is the upflow anaerobicsludge blanket, which has performed well inBrazil and Colombia. The point is theimportance of developing technical solutionsthat are adapted to the climatic, economic andmanagerial realities of developing countries.

(d) Rethinking institutionalarrangements

A recent comprehensive review of forty years ofWorld Bank experience in water and sanitationpinpoints "institutional failure" as the mostfrequent and persistent cause of poorperformance. This section deals with the keyareas for institutional reform.

Improving the performance of publicutilities:

A World Bank review of more than 120 sectorprojects over twenty-three years concludes thatonly in only four countries-Singapore, Korea,Tunisia and Botswana-have public water andsewerage utilities reached acceptable levels ofperformance.

A few examples illustrate how serious thesituation is:

. In Accra, Ghana, only 130 connectionswere made to a sewerage systemdesigned to serve 2,000 connections.. In Caracas and Mexico City an estimated30 percent of connections are notregistered.. Unaccounted-for-water, which is 8percent in Singapore, is 58 percent inManila and around 40 percent in mostLatin American cities. For Latin America asa whole, such water losses cost between$1 and $1.5 billion in revenue foregoneevery year.

. The number of employees per 1,000water connections is between 2 and 3 inWestern Europe, around 4 in a well rundeveloping country utility (Santiago inChile), but between 10 and 20 in mostLatin American utilities.

Financial performance is equally poor. A recentreview of Bank projects found that borrowersoften broke their financial performancecovenants. A corollary is that the shortfallshave to be met by large injections of publicmoney. In Brazil from the mid-1970s to mid-1980s about $1 billion a year of public cash wasinvested in the water sector. The annual federalsubsidy for water and sewerage services toMexico City amounts to over $1 billion a year or0.6 percent of GDP.

Public utilities play a dominant role in theprovision of water and sanitation servicesthroughout the world. There are manyexamples of such utilities working effectively inindustrialized countries and, as describedabove, a few in developing countries. Anessential requirement for effective performanceis that both the utility and the regulatory body(necessary for such natural monopolies) be freefrom undue political interference. In the case ofthe utility the vital issue is managerialautonomy, particularly as regards personnelpolicies; in the case of the regulatory body, thesetting of reasonable tariffs. Although thisrecipe is simple and well-tested in manyindustrialized countries, it has beenextraordinarily difficult to implement indeveloping countries other than those with highlevels of governance. Sometimes utilities andregulators are nominally autonomous, butusually key policies (on investments, personnelpolicies and tariffs, for instance) are effectivelymade by government and heavily influenced byshort-term political considerations.

Many projects financed by external agencieshave addressed the problems of public waterutilities via sizable action plans, technicalassistance components, and conditionally. Aswith public enterprises in other sectors, most ofthese efforts failed, in the words of a recentBank review because 'public enterprises indeveloping countries are key elements ofpatronage systems,... overstaffing is often rife,and appointments to senior management


positions are frequently made on the basis ofpolitical connections rather than merit.' Andthings have been getting worse rather thanbetter. Achievement of institutional objectives inWorld Bank-financed water and sanitationprojects fell from about two in three projects inthe late 1970s to less than one in two projectsten years later.

Improving the performance of public utilitiesnevertheless remains an important goal, for tworeasons. First, in the medium-term publicutilities will continue to provide services tomany. Second, improvement in theperformance of public utilities is often a pre-condition if private operators (discussed below)are to be induced to participate.

Management at the lowest appropriatelevel:

A large proportion of overall water resourcesmanagement problems are resolved whenutilities perform efficiently. There are however,externalities, arising from the abstraction of rawand the disposal of wastewater, which demanda broader view. In industrialized countries riverbasin management in the past was largely acommand-and-control type of exercise. Todaythe situation has changed dramatically, withnegotiations among interested partiesbecoming the key to management of theresources. In this context the experience of theFrench River Basin Agencies is particularlypertinent. In broad outline, these agencies aregoverned by "water parliaments', constituted bythe major parties in the basin which have aninterest in the resource. This includesmunicipalities, industries, irrigation authorities,power agencies and environmental groups.The agencies specifically do not interfere withthe operation of local utilities, but pay attentiononly to management of the externalities. This isdone principally through the imposition of awater abstraction charge and a pollutioncharge, with the "water parliament* deciding onthe levels of the charges in accordance with thespecific needs of the basin. The revenuesgenerated by these fees are re-invested inwater production and wastewater treatmentfacilities which serve the needs of the basin.The critical features of the French model - non-interference in the functioning of municipalities;a broad, consensual decision-making process;

and the use of economic instruments - are ofbroad applicability both in developed countriesand in many developing countries.

Separation of regulation and provision:

Experience in industrialized countries showsthat a central problem in improvingenvironmental quality is that the public sectoracts both as supplier of water and wastewaterservices and as environmental regulator. It isboth gamekeeper and poacher. The results ofthis conflict of interest are similar throughout theworld. In the United States, for example,publicly owned municipal wastewater treatmentplants are the most persistent violators ofeffluent discharge standards. In England andWales prosecutions of those responsible forsewage treatment were rare when the riverbasin authorities were responsible for waterresource management, environmentalprotection, and services. Since 1989, whenprivate agencies were given responsibility forthe delivery of water and sewerage services(with public agencies retaining regulatoryauthority), fines have been increasedsubstantially and prosecutions are diligentlyenforced. The flip side of separating powers isthat service delivery agencies are, in theprocess, liberated from serving multiple tasksand can pursue well-defined and specificobjectives.

Expanding the role of the privatesector:

Increased private sector involvement iswarranted in two areas. One is in services topublic utilities. In industrialized countries theengineering of public works is dominated byprivate firms, which depend for their survival ontheir reputation for performance and assume alegal liability for the consequences of anyprofessional negligence. These factors providepowerful incentives for providing cost-effectiveand high-quality services, and concurrentlyprovido a stringent environment for thesupervised 'apprenticeship* training that is arequired part of professional certification inthese countries. By contrast in manydeveloping countries (particularly in Asia andAfrica) the engineering of public works isdominated by large public sectorbureaucracies. Employment security is total,


9

promotion is by seniority alone, good work goesunrecognized, poor work is not subject to anysanctions and an atmosphere of lethargyprevails. The direct consequence is theconstruction of high-cost, low-quality facilities;the indirect effects include a weak professionallabor force. The obvious answers are, first, todecrease the direct involvement of thegovernment in public works; and second, tonurture the private engineering consultingindustries.

More private involvement is also warranted inthe operation of water, sewerage, and solidwaste companies. Numerous studies inindustrialized countries show that privateenergy, telecommunications and water utilitiesare more efficient than public ones. Manyindustrialized countries have found it difficult toreform public enterprises, except as part of amove to privatize them. Indeed, privatization isincreasingly seen as a way not only to effectperformance improvements, but also to lock inthe gains achieved under reforming publicownership.

In developing countries there has been someexperience with private sector operation ofwater and sanitation utilities. Cote d'Ivoire wasa pioneer. SODECI, the utility in Abidjan, isconsidered to be one of the best-run utilities inAfrica The water utility of Macao was privatizedin 1985, and showed dramatic improvements inperformance, with consumption doubling andthe percent of unaccounted-for-water falling byover 50 percent in six years. More recentlyGuinea has let a lease contract for water supplyto its principal cities, with dramaticimprovements in the financial condition in justthe first eighteen months (as a result of raisingthe efficiency of collection from 15 percent to 70percent).

Other countries have taken more incrementalapproaches. EMOS, the utility servingSantiago, Chile, has used private contracts forfunctions such as meter reading, pipemaintenance, billing and vehicle leasing. As aresult, EMOS has one of the highest staffproductivity rates among water and seweragecompanies in Latin America, even when thelabor content of contracts is taken into account.The ratio for water supply operations (includingcontracts) is about 3.5 employees per 1,000

connections-3 to 6 times lower than that forother companies in the region. The example ofthe Aguas Industriales de Vallejo in Mexico (seeBox 2) shows that the involvement of the privatesector can take remarkably innovative formsand can even deal with the 'public good" issuessuch as wastewater treatment. In SouthernTurkey the private sector has become involvedin the management of the sewage treatmentfacilities which are vital for the region's touristindustry. Faced with persistently poorperformance of their public utilities, many othercountries are now seriously considering greaterprivate sector involvement, in general followingvariations of the French model. For example, inLatin America, concession contracts arecurrently being let for the supply of water andsewerage services in Buenos Aires andCaracas.

Private involvement in this sector is not apanacea and never a simple business. In theUnited Kingdom water privatization is generallyconsidered to be the most complex of allprivatizations undertaken. In developingcountries there are formidable problems. Forthe private operator, the risk involved indeveloping countries is typically high. Inaddition to the obvious political andmacroeconomic risks, there is usually onlyrudimentary knowledge of the condition of theassets and uncertainty about the government'scompliance with terms of the contract. Therewill often be strong opposition from groups-such as existing agencies and labor unions -who stand to lose from greater private sectorinvolvement.

For the government, there are problems, too.Because of economies of scale, it is virtuallyimpossible to have direct competition amongsuppliers in a specific area Countries havetried a variety of solutions. In France there isperiodic competition for markets. In Englandand Wales, economic regulators are mandatedto reward efficiency by comparing the relativeperformance of different companies (a practicewhich is unlikely to be applicable elsewhere). Inaddition, in many developing countries it isoften difficult to attract private sector interest.Only a handful of firms compete internationallyfor such contracts. And in Guinea, for example,only two of these international firms bid on theConakry concession contract. Furthermore, in


many instances there are serious questionsregarding protection of the public interest whenthe negotiations involve, on the one hand,sophisticated private companies and, on theother hand, relatively incapable and sometimescorrupt government agencies.

The case for private sector involvement issimpler and stronger still in the solid wastecollection business. Whereas foreign control ofwater supply is often perceived to involve losingsovereignty over a strategic sector, no onecares if foreigners pick up the garbage. Inaddition, for populations over about 50,000there are no economies of scale, and thus nonatural monopoly. Experience in manycountries-including Argentina, Brazil, Canada,Chile, Colombia, Japan, Switzerland and theUnited States-has shown that the private sectoralmost invariably collects solid waste moreefficiently than municipalities. Unit costs forpublic systems are 50 percent to 200 percenthigher, with the private sector efficiency gainsapparently greatest in developing countries.

Increasing community involvement:

Community groups and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also havea role to play in the supply of water andsanitation services and the collection of waste.Box 7 tells the remarkable story of the provisionof water and sewerage services to the urbanpoor in Sao Paulo, and of the (changing) rolesof politicians, mobilized communities, andtechnical agencies in this success. As theOrangi and condominial examples show, in theurban fringe the most productive relationshipbetween community groups and the formalsector is that of partnership. Often this willmean public financing of the "external' or "trunk"infrastructure (which may be operated by eitherthe public or, preferably, the private sector) andthe community paying for, providing andmanaging the "internal" or feeder"infrastructure. Poor communities throughoutthe world have also demonstrated that they cancollect solid waste. A frequent problem is thatthe formal system does not do its part, namely

Box 7: Democracy and Water Supply for the Poor: The case of Sao Paulo

In the 1980s the cityof Sào Pàulò^ Brazil, made extraordinaryWater supply arid sanitation ser^^ apiped water s u p ^and 15%t ' ::;| :-;•; !î): i í£ : i : • :;: :; :. : ; ;:• ; : ; :.;:/ •• :.:; $ • :: '-:^ Cf ]^¥:M^. V: r:;! :'• : : ': t ^ • I I :; ^ ) • -: • .: : • : ;: : :.

SABESP, the state water utility serving Sào Paulo; isa/very sophisticated technical water supplyorganization. Until the emergence of democracy in Brazil, SABESP had defined its role narrowly andtechnocratically. Specifically it did not consider provision of services to the faveilas to be its responsibility,since it was notable to do this according to its prescribed technical standayvere not "legal*- Before tjhíé legitimizàtion of political activity: in Brazil in the early: 1980s¿ SABESPsuccessfully; resisted pressures to provide services to the favelas. While SABESP was resisting thispressure, a smajr municipal agency (C^providing wàterand sanitation services to the poor: On the tech not involve provision of•second-cfass* service, but of reducing the cost of providing in-house services by using plastic pipe andservicing of narrow roads where access was iimitièdi On the iiistfttrtional side ¡t meant the communityassuming significant responsibility for community relations, and for supervising the work of thecontractors; • J ; : \ . : ^ ; ; T . . ' V - : ••...'."•.:,• • • • ? ; • : ••'•'• . : : . ' : ; : . . ^ : \ : y r ^ ^ ; : - [ : f " : - : : - . - ' : ; " v ' ' - : ." . : : . : ' ; V . ' • ' : :•' • ':•

As the military regime withdrew and was replaced by democratic politics; the pressures on SABESP toserve the faveilas increased. Pressure from the communities on SABESP were channeled through themunicipal agencies, responsive officials and politicians (including the mayor and governor), Since COBEShad shown how it was, in fact, possible to serve the faveilas, SABESP had no option but to respond.

Thé fessons from Sao Paulo are that democratic politics in Brazil has played a fundamental role in allowingthe demands of the poor to be expressed, and in transforming sophisticated technical agencies frombeing part pith© problem into being part of the solution;


the transfer and disposal of the waste collectedby the community.

Because many water and sanitation servicesare monopolies, consumers cannot forcesuppliers to be accountable by giving theirbusiness to a competitor. To give consumers avoice in the political process, consumers'associations and rate-payers' boards becomesvital. Paradoxically, because there is such anobvious need for oversight of the activities of aprivate operator of a natural monopoly, greaterprivate sector involvement stimulates greaterconsumer involvement. In the United Kingdom,for example, water users have had a muchgreater say in the running of the industry sinceprivatization.

The performance of water and sanitationinstitutions in rural areas has often been poor,with innumerable examples of malfunctioningand abandoned public water supplies. Untilrecently many external agencies-which havehad great influence in the rural water sector-have argued that rural people are too poor tocontribute to either the construction or therecurrent costs of this 'basic need". In manycountries users contribute nothing even to themaintenance of supplies.

in recent years external agencies andgovernments alike have become aware thatinvolvement of the users is essential if watersupplies are to be sustained. Generally it hasbeen assumed that support - in the form ofinformation, motivation and technical assistance- to the community will come from thegovernment. The difficulty is that governments,especially in rural areas, are often weak, andtheir officials rarely have an incentive to providesuch support. Here the private sector (includingNGOs) may be able to help.

Promising examples of the involvement of small-scale private operators in developing countriesinclude:

. In rural Pakistan there are about 3 millionfamilies have wells fitted with pumps, manyof which are motorized. These suppliesare paid for in full by the families, with all ofthe equipment provided and serviced by avibrant local, private sector industry.. In Lesotho, bricklayers were trained (bygovernment) to build improved pit latrines.

Government banks also provided(unsubsidized) credit for the financing ofimproved latrines. The program has beena singular success, thanks mainly to theaggressive role played by the bricklayersin expanding their markets (and,incidentally, providing services).. In West Africa a private handpumpmanufacturer has developed a "SearsRoebuck'-type scheme whereby purchaseof a pump includes five years of support,including training and the provision ofspare parts. Later on, the community willbe able to maintain the pump and willpurchase the necessary spare parts fromlocal traders. Because the private sectoragent has clear incentives to provide suchservices effectively, this arrangement maywork better than government support forcommunities.

Creating an enabling environment:

This paper has argued that massiveimprovements are possible, in the environment,health, economic efficiency and equity. The keyis firmly in the hands of governments, for thesingle most important factor needed is politicalwill. Where there are long-established anddeeply-entrenched traditions of good publicadministration (such as in Botswana, Korea,and Singapore) it is evident that autonomous,accountable public sector agencies can provideefficient and equitable services. For the largemajority of developing countries, however, suchlevels of governance are not attainable in theshort run, and an important means for providingaccountable and efficient services is greaterinvolvement of the private sector. In this paperthe examples of Chile, Cote d'Ivoire, Guinea,and Mexico have shown that once a politicaldecision is taken to involve the private sector, itcan be done successfully. Where there is a will,there is a way.

To allow helpful change to occur, governmentmust concentrate on the things that it, and onlyit, can do. Its job is to define and enforce anappropriate legal, regulatory, and administrativeframework. This includes tasks as fundamentaland diverse as: rewriting legislation so thatwater markets can come into existence;rewriting contract laws so that the private sectorcan participate with confidence; building a


capacity for environmental and, whereappropriate, economic regulation; developingfinancial mandates for utilities which encourageconservation; and setting and enforcing qualitystandards for equipment. Governments mustalso create conditions under which others-theprivate sector, NGOs, communities andconsumers-can play their parts.

Structured learning:

Developing effective institutional arrangementsis thus the core of the challenge facingdeveloping countries in the water sector. Thispaper describes some of the promisingdirections which are emerging. In recent yearsa remarkable consensus around such ideas

Bûx 8: Structured Learning - the PROSANEAR Project In Brazil

The 1960s and 197Cte were the y ears of the'Brazilianthe two decadea This growth was, however, spread very unevenly, with the top 10% of the populationaccounting for almost 50% of all income, Over the same period the proportion of population living int o w n s a n d c i t i e s r o s e f r o m b e l o w 5 0 % t o a l m o s t 7 5 % , ': : :.: • ir : •:.:.: : S B '• ',: -y- '"'••• •. •. •:•:: ;ii ï- WÏ: '•••••':• :^-- ••, :•:•: '• : : i : ..

While great progress had been made in providing piped water (the proportion of urban dwellers with anadequate water supply had risen from 50% in 1965 to 80% in 1986), the provision of sanitation serviceslagged far behind. 50% of all urban dwellers and the vast majority of the poor did not have access toadequate sanitation services in 1986. Accordingly, with the end of military rulé in thémid-1980s; oneofthe major challenges facing a democratic Brazil was (and is) the provision of sanitation servicestothepoorwho live in the urban periphery, In this context, Brazil entered into negotiations with the World Bankfor thefinancing of a project which would provide poor people with adequate sanitation services in urban

As documented ¡nBox 6, Brazil was a leader in developing innovative institutional and technologicalsolutions to the sanitation problems of the urban poor, and had an able and experienced core ofprofessionals dedicated to this task. These professionals, however, had no illusion about the task ahead •- they realised that something had been learned through; experiences like the 'condominial*, but alsoacknowledged that there had been many failures: They realised that they were a long way from having ageneralizable 'modeffor providing affordable, good quality sanitation services. Accordingly, theypersuaded the World Bank to go along with a radically different approach. Rather than a conventionalproject which would have pre-established service levels, delivery systems and targets, they argued foranexperimental program, the objective of which would be to stimulate agencies - including local governmentand the state water companies— to experiment with innovative institutional and technological approachesto providing sanrtationseivi(^s to the poor. This World Bank*: s u p p o r t e d Õ À Í ^ * ^ ^ : : : '

The project Is now under execution; and shows every sign of being a resounding success. A wide varietyof innovative methods are being used at many levels; These range from modes of interaction between theWorld Bank ami the Brazilian bank responsible for executing thé proje^^communities in the decision to participate in the project, to community participation in project execution,

levels.

The project is important not only because it will bring improved services to many lownncome families, butbecause it ihrüátes a radically different prc^ss of prcM^technics arid institutional innovation; monitoring and evaluating processes and outcomes so thatadjustments can be made rapidly both within sub-projects and across projects as successes and failuresemerge; breaking the rhasterplan/bluepririt mold and providingother developing countries. ••:-y\j :o r ^ y . ^ K . . ' i ' ' • ' • • • '

Briscoe paper for Reveile Symposium

has emerged. For example, at the InternationalConference on Water and the Environment inearly 1992,100 governments agreed to the"Dublin Statement', the two fundamentalprinciples of which are that water should betreated as an economic resource, and thatmanagement should be at the lowestappropriate level.Translating these sound principles into practicein a wide variety of cultural, natural andeconomic circumstances is an immensechallenge. A great deal remains to be learnedand to be done. From the examples ofsuccessful institutional reforms it is clear thatthis is always largely an experimental process,comprising two essential components. The firstis to structure the reforms taking carefulaccount of the incentives facing the variousparties and careful account of experiences inother settings. The second is to monitorperformance carefully, and to adapt asinformation becomes available.

This 'structured learning" process is nowgetting underway. For instance, in Brazil theWorld Bank-financed PROSANEAR Project (Box8), provides a framework and resources formunicipalities and utilities to experiment withinnovative technical and institutionalarrangements for providing sanitation servicesto the urban poor. Sub-projects are approvedonly when they meet the broad guidelines(which require evidence that they have digestedthe lessons of experience, and that thearrangements take account of the incentivesfacing different stakeholders). And an intensivemonitoring and evaluation effort ensures thatsub-projects learn from their own emergingexperience, and that of the experiences of othersub-projects. In rural areas, similar efforts arenow underway in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Andan international "Utilities Partnership' hasrecently been formed by the United NationsDevelopment Program, the multilateraldevelopment banks and selected bilateral aidagencies to stimulate the reform of urban waterutilities, and to ensure that the lessons ofexperience are learned, shared andincorporated into practice.


I

I f- M. *

page 24.

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