Goal of the 10 Themes
Effective water governance for all water users is the goal of this initiative. One of many methods to achieve effective water governance is through Public-Private Partnerships for water services. Partnerships that have clear communication and expectations among partners and stakeholders are more likely to provide effective water governance. The ten themes in this initiative provide a framework of ideas and ways of working that can contribute toward improved water partnerships, and hopefully effective water governance for all users.
Inspiration for the 10 Themes
The Johannesburg Plan of action, that promotes effective partnerships, highlights typical difficulties of partnerships in the water sector. For example, a difficulty is the lack of common understanding among levels of policy making and implementation levels. Existing partnership instruments addressed many issues, but did not always provide the necessary suggestions to achieve holistic "good water governance".
Introducing the 10 Themes
Therefore, the instruments were developed to provide suggestions for the design and implementation of Public-Private Partnerships in water supply services that aim to be transparent, effective, efficient and equitable. The interlinked instruments start at the policy/decision-maker level by describing basic values, key factors, framework requirements and role models in a political document (the Policy Principles).
These ideas are translated into the implementation phases of a typical PPP (the Implementation Guidelines) and complement the recommendations with references to supportive tools that exist elsewhere (Tool Container – a library of documents from organisations and researchers around the world).Although much of the focus of the instruments is on the involvement of the private sector in water supply services, a large proportion of the content is also applicable for systems managed by public utilities.
How the 10 Themes Were Shaped
The initiative has been actively collecting the experience and recommendations from a broad variety of stakeholders and experts, and compiling them into target-group oriented instruments for enabling effective Public-Private Partnerships.
The instrument development has been complemented by active communication (in events, workshops, presentation on international conferences) and an ongoing dialogue with a broad range of stakeholders.
Over 300 stakeholder representatives have contributed: representatives from national, regional and local governments, UN and multilateral organisations, local authorities, public utilities, civil-society organisations, private companies, business organisations, labor unions, international financial institutions, development agencies, as well as water expert groups.
The review of existing literature was complemented by stakeholder interviews and discussions in various international events and on different platforms. Several sketches of the policy-level document, “Policy Principles,” were produced and discussed in an open consultation process. The operational guidance document, "Implementation Guidelines", was developed in collaboration with renowned experts in the field and submitted thorough a review process. To ensure and verify the applicability to varying contexts, regional multi-stakeholder discussions and applications have been held before producing a "Version 1" of the instruments.
10 Themes that Evolve
As the instruments are living documents, adapting with time, experiences from using the instruments will be systematically collected and fed back into updated versions to ensure best practices are taken up and common pitfalls are avoided.