Public Public Partnerships

TNI is advocating Public Public Partnerships (PUP) as an alternative policy to privatisation or to Public-Private Partnerships in water services as well as a concrete tool to work with partners to reform public water companies/utilities, improve services and realise the right to water on the ground. A public-public partnership (PUP) is simply collaboration between two or more public authorities or organizations, based on solidarity, to improve the capacity and effectiveness of one partner in providing public water or sanitation services. They have been described as a “peer relationship forged around common values and objectives, which exclude profit-seeking”. PUPs avoid the risks which are typically encountered in public-private partnerships: transaction costs, contract failure, renegotiation, the complexities of regulation, commercial opportunism, monopoly pricing, commercial secrecy, currency risk, and lack of public legitimacy. In general the objectives of PUPs are to improve the capacity of the assisted partner. In practice, PUPs' work can be divided into five broad categories: training and developing human resources, technical support on a wide range of issues, improving efficiency and building institutional capacity, financing water services, improving participation. Public Community Partnerships Public-communitarian partnerships (PCPs) are internationally referred to as public-public partnerships but PCPs has a stronger connotation of community. While government and public water authorities should adopt and implement a water delivery policy that prioritises serving the needs of rural communities, many state-owned utilities fail to serve hard-to-reach areas. Community-based water systems are bridging the gap in water service delivery in many parts of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. TNI has observed new forms of partnerships between public authorities and rural communities, in which the communities are engaged in the decision-making about water solutions, supported with public funding and expertise and are empowered to take responsibility for running water systems. Such partnerships can bring rapid and lasting improvements.

Blunt speaking opens up important debate at water summit

October 2013
Satoko Kishimoto

Instead of an ideological obsession with illusory private sector ‘solutions’, the international community would do better to support socially ambitious public operators working together in partnership with other public utilities.

A critique of the Water Operators Partnerships in Latin America and the Caribbean (WOP-LAC)

September 2012
Philipp Terhorst

This discussion paper aims to generate much-needed discussions about the experiences with Water Operators Partnerships (WOPs) projects on the ground, in this case in Latin America. The paper highlights a number of serious problems with the WOP-LAC projects, many of which are run by commercially oriented or private water operators.

Citizen-Controlled Water Supply Systems

July 2012
Ambe J. Njoh

The Bonadikombo water supply project exemplifies participatory planning in action. It shows how the various aspects of participation elaborated in participatory planning theory play out in practice by using elements of enlistment, cooperation and consultation.

Strengthening Community Water Management in Africa

July 2012
Jean-Claude Magalhaes, Yves Duval and Mario Milanesi

Over the last ten years, a successful public-public partnership has taken shape between the water users associations in a rural region of Senegal, the French city of Cherbourg-Octeville as well as several other partners including civil society groups in Senegal and Europe.