Regulating Water Services for All in Developing Economies

UN World Water Development Report 2017: "Wastewater: The untapped resource"

“…In order to contract private local or international firms to conduct services previously carried out by government departments or parastatals, new ways of licencing and overseeing operations were instituted in many countries (Finger and Allouche, 2002). It is increasingly recognized that improved regulatory oversight is required for both private and public service providers (Kjellén, 2006;Gerlach and Franceys, 2010). Important differences exist in the scale of operations.…”

UN World Water Development Report 2015: "Water for a Sustainable World"

“…social objectives may be high on the political agenda of most developing countries, yet they tend to be poorly followed up in regulatory practices. this may be a consequence of importing regulatory frameworks from economies where services are already provided to all citizens, and where coverage is consequently not an issue (Gerlach and franceys, 2010). equity needs to be kept as a priority at several policy levels and, in particular, followed through by regulatory measures.…”

Ensuring Sustainable Access to Drinking Water in Sub Saharan Africa: Conflict Between Financial and Social Objectives

“…This binary approach of the MDGs has been often criticized (among others by Gerlach and Franceys (2010)) for its inability to capture the specific conditions of local access, but it still remains the most simple and comparable indicator.…”

“…Achieving a balance between financial and social objectives is also a key challenge for the regulators of water services, regardless the nature of the regulated provider (public monopoly, formal/informal private sector) (Gerlach & Franceys, 2010). Furthermore, in order to provide the desired incentives, benchmarking regulation must consider baseline values and feasibility when setting targets for each indicator and the weighting system for their aggregation (Marques, Simõ es, & Berg, 2013).…”

“…Achieving universal access to water is very challenging in Africa, due to rapid urbanization and to the present low coverage rates. Coverage indicators capture access to utility water 3 and they are also suitable to capture the dimension of equity in urban contexts because the fraction of urban population excluded from formal water services usually includes the poorest one, so that extending access is considered among the key pro-poor interventions (Gerlach & Franceys, 2010).…”