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EXPERTS’ WORKSHOP
- II -
DEVELOPMENT OF REGULATORY TOOLS AND INSTUTIONAL CAPACITY BUILDING
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WORKING PAPER
CURRENT SITUATION
II.1- INSTITUTIONAL IMPROVEMENTS:
1. In general terms, the difficulties encountered to achieve the objectives of global and sustainable water resources management, result primarily from inadequate institutional organization. They are often:
- a lack of global and regional planning both in terms of urban and rural development;
- a lack of water resource planning and management;
- poor management of community water services and irrigation.
The main difficulties can be outlined as follows :
Each State intends to develop "its" water resources within "its" own borders, sometimes without taking into account the necessary solidarity between "downstream and upstream users".
Although International Conventions already exist, each State generally prefers to manage "its" water on "its" territory without any real dialogue with its neighbours.
3. Despite a few international convention initiatives, conflicts between States for the fair allocation of shared resources or because of pollution can lead to major regional tensions.
4. These issues are not better solved in many large federal countries, when the respective responsibilities of the Central Government and of the States, or even between the States themselves, still overlap.
In many countries, each specialized technical administration develops the sector according to its own concerns : agriculture, industry, hydroelectricity, public works, urban development, tourism, environmental protection and conservation; coordination and sometimes dialogue still needs to be organized.
6. · Integrated information systems on resource quantity and quality, on withdrawals and discharges, on the preservation of public interests are often embryonic, as well as basin observatories.
7. Whereas international donors recommend more and more to design watershed masterplans, in order to coordinate sectoral development programmes, and to establish adequate management organizations, such actions or even approaches are still too rare.
8. · II.1.3 - The regulation of water allocations between the various categories of users can be improved:
The important demand for irrigation water and the growing demand for domestic and industrial water could lead to immediate and short-term issues of resource allocation, in case of shortage and in the most arid regions in particular.
The exclusively quantitative approach, which has been prevailing until the last few years, will now have to integrate a qualitative approach that will induce substantial changes in the organization and practices of water resources management and in the behaviour of various categories of users, in order to develop more efficient practices and organize the recycling and optimal reuse of treated wastewater in particular.
Uncontrolled withdrawals and huge wastages may lead to dangerous, even irreversible, over-exploitation of groundwater and ecosystems.
This in notably the case when the delicate issue of the link between land tenure rights, which are static, and the right to use water, which is mobile, has not been solved. This hinders the necessary control of withdrawals and discharges by public authorities.
Administrations have not usually the adequate means to ensure " water law enforcement " and thus cannot sufficiently control withdrawals and discharges and the follow-up of disputes. There are still few real " registration " of users.
Access to information and awareness raising of responsible local officials and representatives of users and of the population are hardly ensured.
This prevents the participation of users in decision-making and in the funding and efficient management of institutions and services.
As for institutions, they do not always try to understand populations‘ needs and practices as regards the different uses of water. Yet, this is a prerequisite for the formulation of projects aiming at providing the parties concerned with sustainable services.
However, interesting programmes have been developed to assist in the decision-making of responsible local officials and for the information of users and the public.
11. II.1.6 - projects must be financially viable:
Water management must integrate a social and environmental component which makes investment and exploitation strategies more complex.
12. Tariffs, whether for irrigation or drinking water, or for sanitation, when they do exist, do not, too often, allow the balance of investment amortization costs, or even those of operation and maintenance. The replacement of equipment is rarely ensured.
13. It is obvious that public budgets alone will be insufficient to meet the considerable investments to be made, even with international assistance (possibly concessional) which, for the main part, will have to be reimbursed.
Competition is high with other needs that cannot be financed by users’ contributions.
14. It is necessary, in order to prevent a rather quick disruption, to use all means for an industrial and commercial management of water services, suited to local contexts.
15. Public Authorities must keep control when access to drinking water is through a public utility whose management has been delegated.
16. · II.1.7 - Water services face common problems:
² works are badly maintained and quickly deteriorate
²produced water volumes are much higher than used volumes and most of all billed volumes
²the number of unpaid bills is very high
² working organization and procedures that are not sufficiently orientated toward optimum human resources management and staffs that are too large and poorly trained.
17. The lack of technical, administrative and commercial management leads to serious consequences on projects, those supported by international donors in particular :
II.2 REMINDER OF CONDITIONS AND PRINCIPLES FOR BETTER MANAGEMENT
18. · II.2.1 - A clear administrative and regulatory framework:
Complementary roles must be defined:
- the State in terms of regulation and control
- local communities and users for decision-making which concerns them
- public and private operators for management and operation
- the Civil Society
19. and take into account :
- water uses and resources
- regional planning (the use of urban and rural lands for economic, industrial and agricultural purposes)
- geographical, historical, social, cultural and religious characteristics as well as local traditions and customs
- the link between water and land rights
- the requirements of rural development
19 bis . The State must set up the means necessary for making this legal framework complied with. The Administration must get efficient and permanent means for control and monitoring and be assisted in its role of adviser to the users but also in that of possible enforcement whenever necessary.
Non-compliance with standards or administrative conditions should lead to penalties or fines. In some countries, serious law infringement may lead to prison sentences.
In some countries, in Central and Eastern Europe in particular, these "penalties" may be automatic and permanent, and be imposed on industrialists as soon as their polluting discharges exceed a certain threshold. Such practices may lead to a " right to pollute " that is not an incentive for the reduction of discharges.
20. II.2.2.- which objectives and when?
The sector requires strengthened actions, in order to better manage services and increase the efficiency of the consumed water as well as important investments especially to improve access to water and its quality, to develop sound irrigation necessary for meeting food needs and control pollution which are becoming major problems.
21. Yet, it is now obvious that public budgets alone will not be able to meet these needs and that the capacity to invest will mainly depend on the possibility of the various categories of users to financially participate in this sector development.
22. The two possible adjustment variables are :
- on one hand, consumption or quality standards to be achieved, the cost of which is obviously increasing when they are more ambitious.
- on the other, the time limit to achieve them, which allows the making of efforts according to real availabilities.
* II.2.2.1 - Regulation and standards are important
23. It is clear that each Country, or even the International Community, must adopt objectives and rules which concern everybody, with realistic and progressive ambitions and the corresponding means for control and enforcement This is the case of international conventions or European regulations for instance.
24. This is essential, both in terms of :
- orientation of efforts that users are requested to make,
- equity, in order for all parties concerned to know that what they are required to do is also requested to other people facing the same situation : citizens’ equality as regards legislation or public services - equality of competition between firms and producers (farmers who use irrigation, fish farmers...)
25. Nevertheless, these standards must be the subject of a debate that takes reality into account: it is especially the case for access to drinking water :
Meeting all populations’ basic needs for drinking water as soon as possible, whatever their money or non-monetary income, should be the first priority. Basic needs are needs which must be met anyhow, regardless of users’ financial solvency. To become effective, this priority must be managed with realism.
26. Ensuring compliance with bacteriological and chemical standards, for larger quantities than those necessary for meeting basic requirements, can be very costly. In many developed countries, that are often quite far from achieving the former, these standards will only be ensured in the long term, in correlation with the general economic and social development.
27. Service providing techniques must be economically and socially adapted to local supply conditions. Supplying water 24 hours a day through individual connections is a long-term objective firstly applicable to dense or wealthy urban areas, as it occurred in all industrialized countries. In many peri-urban and rural areas, it is oversized and costly as compared to the objectives of meeting basic needs and to the financial capacities of consumers and donors. Cheap and quick solutions of community supply, or by way of unofficial channels, to meet basic needs will still be used for a long time as regards water supply and sanitation. These solutions still require important applied research and a lot of innovations in technical, commercial, social and institutional fields.
28. End-user water supply can very often be efficiently entrusted to official and unofficial retailers or to local associations. These parties are usually much closer to the users and their problems than large technical enterprises. Yet, regulation and control mechanisms will have to be set up to protect users and prevent that the perverse effects of monopolies be replaced by others.
* II.2.2.2 - realistic time schedules must be planned:
29. Indeed, setting up compulsory means and infrastructures always takes a long time, due to the delays necessary for :
* the awareness raising of the public and users,
* administrative reforms, creating the useful legal framework,
* the study of projects and for obtaining the authorizations and funding necessary for their implementation.
Finally, the few available credits require long-term and multi-year programming.
30. Water policy is highly capitalistic and must be defined for a 10 or 30 year period depending on initial situations and acceptable efforts.
Due to the high number of needs to be met and actions required, it is essential to adopt a sound and multitask common approach to structuring developments to be undertaken, to possible uses and their localization and to the objectives to be reached, both in terms of resources made available and quality.
31. In that sense, the establishment of masterplans for development and management, stating medium and long term objectives, proved to be interesting.
32. The experience thus acquired showed that such schemes had to :
- be based on a participative approach that associates the different categories of users, Local Authorities and the administration,
- be elaborated on the most consistent scale possible to ensure integrated water management. Such a scale is usually the watershed of large rivers or of their main tributaries, and of large aquifers.
- take the form of Priority Action Programmes, that set possible actions to be carried out in the short term (5 years), according to emergencies, financial resources that are really available and administrative or technical constraints to the implementation of concrete projects.
33. It is then necessary to :
+ set attainable objectives and define priorities according to available means,
+ define a progressive and realistic development of financial instruments, that :
- first concern parameters which create the most serious disruptions that can be solved thanks to easily applicable technical solutions,
- select easily identifiable "black spots",
- first involve the main users and polluters (Electricity Company, large development companies, big industrial companies, towns) instead of early involving villages or small irrigation users for instance, which could lead to many difficulties and low financial yield....
34. Economic calculation techniques and indicators on water markets can allow the establishment of more reliable economic bases for choosing investments and evaluating large projects.
35. The socio-economic evaluation, the search for the " cheapest solutions ", the choice of projects, must distinguish the different levels of resource mobilization, sectoral uses and wastewater treatment.
36. In particular, the level of resource raising is becoming more and more important in financial terms : it concerns the decreasing yields of the water sector. Methodologies for the evaluation of multi-purpose projects should be particularly precise, those for multi-use dams in particular. The value of regulated and stored water will have to be strictly considered according to the developments undertaken by the various sectoral users.
· II.2.3.- associating users:
37. The experience that has been acquired for several decades, regarding water management, emphasized the need for an institutional association of the "civil society" inside mechanisms of decentralized water resources management, in order to allow an optimum and adapted meeting of growing and diversified needs.
Indeed :
38. - administrations and public bodies in charge of water management must decentralize their actions, while relying on partnerships that enable a real participation of Local Authorities and users’ representatives (households, irrigation users, industrialists, fishermen,...) in decision-making;
39. - improving public services, such as drinking water supply, sanitation or irrigation, will only be possible if mechanisms are set up for recovering costs from the users. This will only be accepted by the users if they are given the guarantee that water is of good quality, services are permanent, management methods are transparent and that they will participate more and more in management;
40. - decision-making will have to become progressively democratic, widely opening possibilities of expressing counter-opinions in order not to sink into theoretical and fruitless debates, and have an independent and sound expertise capacity and access to transparent and complete information;
41. - many needs will not be met by way of the traditional channel of Public Authorities but by individual or community field initiatives, which will not necessarily be spontaneous and will imply adequate skills and know-how.
42. A widely spread movement towards the decentralization of the State’s role in the organization of water supply and sanitation services to municipalities and of the tasks of collective irrigation to irrigation users’ communities must be taken into account : to be successful, this will require that they become real managers of " industrial and commercial services " and thus acquire quickly a good knowledge of techniques and management.
43. The establishment, modernization, management and operation of the different public water services, as well as the direct intervention of administrations, have most often ended in dysfunction or failure.
On the contrary, there are only a few examples of entirely liberal action of private companies in this sector.
44. Therefore, experience leads to promote industrial or commercial approaches within a framework organized by National or Local Public Authorities.
45. * II.2.4.1. As regards public authorities, such a principle recommend a real independence of management, with an autonomous balanced budget, a responsible board of directors and management that intervene within the framework of a realistic and multi-year " programme contract " that sets objectives to be reached and constraints to be respected, tariffs and their evolution, and possible public subsidies for specific services provided to administrations or the conditions that they would require, besides the possibilities of direct funding of the services provided to the users.
46. * II.2.4.2. the intervention of specialized private companies is more and more frequent and justified :
- either by an important need for financing,
- or by the necessity of using an expertise or a specialized know-how.
47. These private companies very rarely own the networks and installations themselves.
48. Their action is usually the subject of a contract with competent Authorities which, most of the time, own these installations.
49. It is therefore important for these medium or long term contracts to be adapted, clear and easy to control, and to give the necessary guarantees to both interested parties, especially when they plan an input of private capital which will have to be amortized.
50. Such contracts must be transparent and plan strict control conditions, as well as the possible situations of cancellation, litigation and end of contract.
51. Several types of contracts, that can be combined, can be considered according to local contexts, the political choices of Authorities and services to be provided.
52. They may only deal with operation, maintenance or commercial activities, using specific or general formulae for action, from service providing, to leasing that can possibly be accompanied by shares in the profits, up to the complete " affermage " (leasing) of a service;
53. They may also deal with the study, funding and implementation of infrastructures, combined with their operation during their depreciation period.
54. These contracts may only concern one or several specific installations (B.O.T.) or all of them, and therefore represent a complete service (concession).
Examples of mixed management, that combines private and public capitals, also exist.
II.3 Training requirements
55. Staffs’ skill is indeed essential to design and better use the large investments that are to be foreseen in the water sector.
56. The services’ requirement in personnel is considerable, either for drinking water supply, wastewater and stormwater collection and treatment in towns, especially the very large metropolis, agricultural irrigation which remains the main consumer of water resources, or for better meeting the demand for industrial water and for the treatment of toxic effluents as well as for flood control.
In developed countries, some water departments, either public or private, devote more than 5 % of their payroll to the continuous professional training of their staff at all hierarchical levels and in all useful specialities.
On the contrary, continuous training is rarely found in the water administrations or departments in many emerging or developing countries: it is estimated that their budgets should include 2 % of their wage bill for training in a first phase.
57. If we can admit that important progress has been achieved to cope with the training needs linked to the input of investment, the two main "missing links" in capabilities remain:
- The required level of "engineers-senior technicians (supervisors)" for operation and maintenance, who are able to operate treatment plants, water supply and collection networks and to head teams of operators, in order to:
* reach the nominal performance expected from equipment.
* prevent the too fast deterioration of equipment, for lack of a real professional maintenance and very high overcosts for repeated rehabilitation.
- The level of "management executives and employees" required to achieve a well-balanced management of services, organize staff management and to meet users' needs on an appropriate tariff and fiscal basis.
58. Then high-level abilities should be developed to meet specific needs such as hydrometeorology, information systems, reuse of treated wastewater, groundwater recharge, use of non-conventional technologies or of those adapted to the local contexts as well as prevention of water-borne diseases.
59. But, the existing training establishments, some of which having reached a very good level, do not however meet all the needs, for lack of means to accommodate a sufficient number of personnel, for default of competence in some technical and economic fields or because training materials do not yet adequately address all the categories of staff that are essential to the smooth running of the water services.
Now the efforts to reinforce local training capacities and to create new ones still remain too individual and dispersed.
60. New initiatives are taken in some countries to develop or create new capacities for continuous high-level professional and vocational training.
- either, in the form of technical centres that offer practical training to the services’ operators by setting them in a working situation. This is the case, for instance, in Morocco where ONEP created such a centre a long time ago, in Algeria with INPE, in Nigeria with NWRI and in Kenya with KWI ... Several projects are on-going for the creation of new centres, in Poland (GFW), Mexico with CNA, in Botswana (SADC), Romania (CNDPAR) or Lebanon (Ministry of Public Works);
- or, in the form of training institutes, specialized in institutional and management fields for executives of administrations and services: it is the case of the Masaryk Institute in Prague (Czech Republic), CIRA in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil), ROSNII in Yekaterinburg (Russia) for instance ...
II.4 Information of decision-makers and users
61. Water management is no longer restricted to professionals of the sector, but involves, more and more;
• members of national parliaments, who vote the necessary laws and budgets as well as evaluate the efficacy of applied policies,
• local elected officials, mainly those of municipalities, who, in many countries, are more and more involved in the organization of public services for drinking water supply and sanitation within the process of decentralized responsibilities,
• representatives of water users, especially managers of professional organizations (farmers, industrialists) or of NGOs who have to participate in various processes such as the preparation of masterplans, the fixing of charges, especially in the midst of advisory councils or basin committees,
• the population in general and water users who have to be aware of the need for wastage control, of the economic value of water, of the prevention of water-borne diseases and pollution.
62. The specific role of women in water supply and domestic uses is now widely recognized.
Their participation in the consultation and decision-making process is essential and will require targeted actions in certain countries due to existing relationships within families.
II.5 Access to information and documentation
63. Access to useful information and institutional, technical or economic documentation is a must.
Most of water administrations or departments have an internal documentation service, but today, still few of them have access to international documentation and organized to widely disseminate their information to outside users.
A huge part of the information remains in the form of " corporate " literature that is never published or remains difficult to consult.
It becomes necessary to help modernizing the documentation centres on water of each interested country and facilitate their access to telematic networks to consult international documentation and exchange information with organizations or countries that have similar concerns or joint projects.
As a follow-up of the Euro-Mediterranean Conference on Water Management of Marseilles (November 1996), the European Union and the 27 countries, signatories of the Barcelona convention, decided to set up the Euro-Mediterranean Water Information System (EMWIS) that will enable them to exchange homogeneous and approved information on Internet, in several languages, between their " national focal points ".
The International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) also develops a system (AQUADOC INTER) for sharing institutional information between its members.
II.6 institutional STRENGTHENING is profitable
This is a difficult but necessary task and this may be a structuring investment.
Improving institutional functioning is a prerequisite to sustainable development in the water sector.
64. The increase in needs and the variety of uses, the complexity of societies, technological advance, and the impact of the economy all create new problems which demand new forms of organization and the strengthening of the concerned institutions.
65. But institutional development is by nature a complex and tricky issue which faces many difficulties :
² Water is a natural monopoly which transcends purely administrative boundaries, whilst at the same time being closely linked with urban and rural development;
² The technical approach often prevails when choices are made with insufficient account being taken of the economic, social and cultural aspects;
² The water sector involves a great many public and private participants, all with different local or sectoral interests which are often contradictory, always independent and which should really be reconciled;
² In this sector, the cultural aspects are both powerful and deep-rooted: water has always been a major concern for population groups and has generated management systems and structured organizations which must be accommodated if new institutions are to be accepted and permitted to function effectively in the long term;
² Finally, strengthening institutions, knowledge and professional abilities of various participants at all levels urgently requires a huge effort which will take time if a lasting result is to be obtained.
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