Public resistance to privatisation in water and energy

Uganda has experienced a major policy shift from a supply-driven to a demand-driven approach in rural water provision since 1990. The article sheds light on the rural population's access to safe water within the changing institutional frameworks. We analysed individual and group interviews with key informants from national to community levels and relevant official documents with the 'SocialEcological Systems' framework and the 'design principles'. Since the implementation of the demand-driven approach, rural safe water coverage has slightly improved but operation and maintenance of water sources pose a great challenge hampering, longterm access to safe water. The abrupt and top-down imposed policy shift has resulted in competing signals from old and new policies creating uncertainty and ambiguity about responsibilities, rules and incentives. The analysis shows the importance of taking into account the implications of national institutional disturbances on local collective action for long-term access to safe water.

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“…conflicts between privatisation and equity, and the unclear role of the state and community (Hall et al 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenging pathways to safe water access in rural Uganda: From supply to demand-driven water governance

2015

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“…Experiences of this kind are prominent in the water sector. The best-known example is the Baltic Sea PuP which took place in the early 1990s with the support of the Baltic Sea programme and involved public water operators in Scandinavia to provide capacity development activities to the municipal authorities in the transitional Baltic States (Hall et al, 2009). Finally, PuPs can be also used to facilitate the implementation of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), as happening in the United States with the aim of advancing business expansion (Hall et al, 2005).…”

Section: Public -Public Partnerships (Pups)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Partnerships for a Better Governance of Natural Hazard Risks

et al. 2014

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This paper discusses the role played by decentralized, voluntary multi-stakeholder partnerships between public authorities and agencies and/or public authorities and civil society for disaster risk reduction. We pay attention to Public -Public Partnerships (PuP), a term coined for public alliances in early 2000s although arguably building upon community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) and disaster risk reduction (CBDRR), as well as other cooperative initiatives. In many respects PuPs became known as a counterpart of PPPs and quickly spread in public water and health service provision. While the concept of PuPs match to some extent the European Union's efforts to expand horizontal cooperation and collaboration, it appears too narrow to capture the sense of European initiatives. In particular, the strict exclusion of business and commercial undertakings in the essence of PuPs by early scholars is not compatible with the call for truly cooperative multi-governance arrangements. The paper examines the concept of PuP, its objectives and defying characteristics, partners involved and relationship tying them. It then moves to understand to what extent partnerships meant to improve cooperation and coordination have permeated the EU legislation and policies, focusing especially on the role of inclusive governance and territorial cooperation. The analysis is complemented by examples of PuPs addressed in the ENHANCE case studies in which disaster risk reduction plays a role.

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“…Atlanta) . In many cases, both in the global North and South, social mobilisation led to local governmental decisions to terminate unsatisfactory private contracts and remunicipalise water operations (Hall et al, 2005;Lobina et al, 2014).…”

Section: The Emergence Of Remunicipalisation As a New Form Of Water Smentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second development is represented by the widespread social resistance against water privatisation (Hall et al, 2005;Lobina and Corporate Accountability International, 2014), which questions both the desirability and the feasibility of the neoliberal project. The third development is closely related to the first two and consists in the increasing termination and remunicipalisation of privatised contracts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Remunicipalisation: Between Pendulum Swings and Paradigm Advocacy

Lobina

2016

Future City

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This chapter considers whether remunicipalisation -the return of water services to public ownership and management following the termination of private operating contracts -has a role to play in the future of the urban water sector. It does so by looking at the process of remunicipalisation in Berlin, Germany and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Attention is paid to the interplay of: 1) pendulum swings between competing paradigms of water service management; 2) the paradigm advocacy resulting in the dominance and emergence of paradigms at local level; and, 3) the conceptual tensions between communitarian and privatist paradigms of urban water management.In both cases, the rigidity of the privatist paradigm has led to the emergence of the communitarian paradigm. Two different processes of remunicipalisation are observed: explicit paradigm advocacy in Berlin, and tacit paradigm advocacy in Buenos Aires. In neither case has the passage from private to public ownership automatically led to the dominance of the communitarian paradigm. Indeed, the causal relationship between remunicipalisation and progressive change is not one of necessity but rather of possibility. Nonetheless, the emergence of water remunicipalisation as a global trend in the last 15 years has profoundly reconfigured institutional trajectories in the urban water sector. The dominance of the privatist paradigm is now challenged in the global North and South and will continue to be in future. This is due to persistent demands by communities for water to be treated as a social good, and the shortcomings of water privatisation as a community development tool.

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Public resistance to privatisation in water and energy

Cited by 165 publications

References 3 publications

Challenging pathways to safe water access in rural Uganda: From supply to demand-driven water governance

Challenging pathways to safe water access in rural Uganda: From supply to demand-driven water governance

Partnerships for a Better Governance of Natural Hazard Risks

Water Remunicipalisation: Between Pendulum Swings and Paradigm Advocacy

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