KNOWLEDGE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE 2016-2018

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AUSTRALIAN URBAN WATER REFORM STORY WITH DETAILED CASE STUDY ON NEW SOUTH WALES

author(s): Salisbury, head, Brian, Groom | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation | country: australia

Urban water services in Australia are recognized as some of the most efficient utilities in the world, but this was not always the case. This study, carried out by the Interna-tional Water Centre (IWC), looks at three decades of experience to draw out how na-tional-level economic reforms in Australia helped transform the traditional state “build and supply” model into a modern service oriented and efficient sector. This work reveals insights around the interplay between state-level reform and regulation, and national framework agreements.

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Australian Urban Water Reform Story

with Detailed Case Study on New South Wales

Chris Salisbury, Brian W. Head, and Eric Groom

W A T E R G L O B A L P R A C T I C EAustralian U

rban Water Reform

StorySalisbury, H

ead, and Groom

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DESIGN, BUILD, OPERATE STANDARD BIDDING DOCUMENTS

author(s): Water GP | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation

This package includes a suite of standard bidding documents for Design, Build and Operate (DBO) contracts for water and wastewater treatment plants to help simplify the contracting process. It includes the initial selection document, guidance note and a standard bidding document.

ALIGNING INSTITUTIONS AND INCENTIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION SERVICES

author(s): mumssen, Saltiel, Kingdom | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation

An analysis of how integrated policy, institutional, and regulatory interventions can help align incentives for more sustainable water supply and sanitation service delivery.

Aligning Institutions and Incentives for Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation ServicesReport of the Water Supply and Sanitation Global Solutions Group, Water Global Practice, World Bank

M A Y 2 0 1 8

Yogita Mumssen, Gustavo Saltiel, and Bill Kingdomwith support from Berenice Flores, Norhan Sadik, Ilan Adler, and Economic Consulting Associates

W A T E R G L O B A L P R A C T I C E

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KNOWLEDGE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE 2016-2018 9

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KNOWLEDGE BRIEF: WHEN, WHY, AND HOW WATER AND SANITATION UTILITIES CAN BENEFIT FROM WORKING TOGETHER

author(s): Water GP | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation

The Global Study on WSS Utility Aggregation provides evidence-based guidance to policy makers and practitioners regarding when, why, and how water and sanitation utilities can work together, or aggregate, to successfully deliver specific policy out-comes, such as better services or lower costs. Aggregation has been regarded as an opportunity to improve cost efficiency and performance of service delivery. However, the study shows that successful aggregation is not always guaranteed.

STATUS OF WATER SECTOR REGULATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA

author(s): mumssen, triche | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation | Region: mena

This report presents an overview of the economic regulation of the water supply and sanitation sector in five countries in the Middle East and North Africa including Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, West Bank and Gaza. It covers the institutional roles and re-sponsibilities, tariff formulation, private sector participation, and the role of citizen engagement.

TOWARD A UNIVERSAL MEASURE OF WHAT WORKS ON RURAL WATER SUPPLY: RURAL WATER METRICS GLOBAL FRAMEWORK

author(s): Water GP | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation

Assessing and measuring the sustainability of rural water supply and sanitation is a difficult task because no standardized set of indicators have been created. This pub-lication summarizes the methodology and conclusions of a study on 40 frameworks and proposes a new Rural Water Metrics Framework including 24 minimum, basic, and advanced indicators to improve data sharing and analysis.

WATER UTILITY TURNAROUND FRAMEWORK

Upcoming Publication | author(s): Soppe | Focus: Water Supply and Sanitation

Improving the performance of water utilities is difficult because the problems that hold them back are complex and multidimensional. This Turnaround Framework provides the best practice approach to improve the efficiency and performance of water utili-ties and increase their ability to access to finance, including commercial finance.

Status of Water Sector R

egulation in the Midd

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W a t e r G l o b a l P r a c t i c e

Yogita U. Mumssen and Thelma Triche, Editorswith support from Norhan Sadik and Ali O. Dirioz

Status of Water Sector Regulation in the Middle East and North Africa

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W S S G S G F R A M E W O R K F O R U T I L I T Y T U R N A R O U N DW A T E R G L O B A L P R A C T I C E

Introduction

The recently adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious agenda of providing universal access to safely managed water supply and sanitation (WSS) services by 2030. Policy makers and sector prac-titioners know that the SDGs will be achieved only if service providers can provide better services at a lower cost. Yet, the past decades’ policy approaches to struc-turing service delivery at the right level have been con-flicting: some countries have chosen to consolidate service provision centrally, hoping for greater profes-sionalism and economies of scale, whereas others have chosen to decentralize and empower local govern-ments in the hope that more local accountability would provide strong incentives to provide good services.

To reconcile those two apparently contrary trends, an increasing number of countries and local governments are turning, with varying levels of success, to the aggregation of local utility companies.1 Making

utilities work together has been regarded as an oppor-tunity to improve the cost efficiency and performance of service providers, thus making them more sustain-able. As a matter of fact, there is ample empirical evi-dence in the literature of the existence of economies of scale in the WSS industry, at least up to a certain level. Furthermore, it seems that large utilities tend to oper-ate at a lower unit cost and perform better than smaller ones do. For instance, Abbot and Cohen (2009) found that significant economies of scale do exist in the WSS industry. More recently, Van den Berg (2015) found, in a study analyzing the performance of WSS utilities in Africa, that size matters in achieving good perfor-mance. Two recent analyses based on IB-Net data for utilities in the Danube region (Klien and Michaud 2016) and in the Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) region (Diaz and Flores 2015) showed lower unit costs for larger utility companies. These studies com-pare utilities serving cities of different sizes. It is not clear when the same scale effects are achieved by

Knowledge Brief: When, Why, and How Water and Sanitation Utilities Can Benefit from Working Together

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Toward a Universal Measure of What Works on Rural Water Supply: Rural Water Metrics Global Framework

A W S P T O P I C B R I E FW A T E R G L O B A L P R A C T I C E

provide decision makers with sufficient and compa-rable evidence on numbers of systems, types of sys-tems, and performance of systems. Given this global challenge, it might be valuable to have a standardized set of indicators that could be adopted and adapted by countries, thus facilitating improved national and global reporting and analysis.

Background to the Study

Countries have developed their own monitoring indicators—many of which have commonalities but are not necessarily exactly the same, and may not be sim-ilarly comprehensive. Decision makers in all countries, however, would likely benefit from ensuring that their monitoring framework produces a standard set of indica-tors against which to compare their rural water systems.

By having one standardized global set of indicators, coun-tries could begin to assess sustainability across aspects that are common to all situations, and in the long term to adapt their own monitoring system toward alignment for producing this set. The adoption of such global indicator set could also facilitate and contribute—along

Problem Statement: Value of a Set of Universal Metrics

Globally, the proportion of people living without improved drinking water was halved between 1990 and 2010; however, inequities remain between and within countries. For example, eight out of 10 peo-ple who are still without access to improved drinking water sources live in rural areas.

Countries are now aiming for the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, which calls for universal and equitable access by 2030. This represents a far more ambitious challenge at a time when many rural water systems in developing countries are not function-ing, or are performing below expected levels. Recent data suggest that although 78 percent of water point schemes are functional at one time, almost 15 percent of water points fail after one year and 25  percent of water points are non-functional by their fourth year (Banks et al. 2016).

Although there is general understanding among professionals about these low levels of performance, there are few country monitoring systems that

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KNOWLEDGE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE 2016-2018

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INTERNATIONAL BENCHMARKING NETWORK FOR WATER AND SANITATION UTILITIES (IBNET)

IBNET is the world’s largest database of water and sanitation tar-iffs and performance data. With more than 15 years of data collection, it helps service providers assess and benchmark their commercial op-erations, price setting and the design of tariff structures that achieve cost recovery within affordable margins. Over 5,000 utilities from hun-dreds of countries from around the world provide data for the Perfor-mance Database and nearly 2,000 provide data in the Tarriff Database. http://www.ib-net.org

IINTERNATIONAL BENCHMARKING AND UTILITIES AGGREGATION

SIASAR: SISTEMA DE INFORMACIÓN DE AGUA Y SANEAMIENTO RURAL

SIASAR - Sistema de Información de Agua y Saneamiento Rural - es una iniciativa conjunta iniciada por los gobiernos de Honduras, Nicaragua y Panamá cuyo objetivo estratégico es contar con una herramienta de in-formación básica, actualizada y contrastada sobre los servicios de abas-tecimiento de agua y saneamiento rural existente en un país.

KNOWLEDGE HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WATER GLOBAL PRACTICE 2016-2018 11

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TOOLKIT ON THE AGGREGATION OF WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION UTILITIES

This toolkit is based on the findings of the new World Bank global study entitled, Joining Forces for Better Services? When, Why, and How Water and Sanitation Utilities Can Benefit from Working Together. It provides evi-dence-based policy advice on when aggregation is likely to be successful and how to make it successful. It draws on both qualitative and quanti-tative evidence and includes case studies, an interactive map, glossary, videos, literature reviews and statistical analysis.

• Report

• aggregation global trends: interactive map and glossary

• Supporting documents

• Global case studies

IINTERNATIONAL BENCHMARKING AND UTILITIES AGGREGATION