Mary Ann Manahan (Focus on the Global South) provides an overview of water issues in Asia, offers a quick scan of the level of water service delivery and type of providers, tackles the problem of liberalization in services, and presents various alternatives to the current model.
3. Asia’s High Growth?
Economic miracle?
• Asians living in extreme
poverty has not changed
in three decades – they
number 1.1 billion in 2008
as they did in 1981!
• ADB’s revised definition
of extreme poverty rate in
developing Asia-Pacific
peg it at 49.5% in 2010
Jobless growth
Public services still a big
problem
4. Access to Water & Sanitation
• Universal & Equitable access still big
problem
– SEA- 30-75% water supply
coverage
• Rural vs. urban supply and coverage
• Sanitation is a big challenge: 1.74
billion without access in Asia
• Transboundary water issues and
challenges of water resource
management/watershed protection
5. Water Resources Profile in Asia
• Asia is well endowed with water resources but
monsoon cycles can induce large inter-seasonal
variations in river flows
• Significant variations across the sub-regions- Central,
South, Southeast and East.
• Amount of water per capita per day (available water)
also varies: Central and East and South Asia lower
levels than global average; Southeast Asia, more than
twice.
6. Right to Water & Sanitation vs.
Privatization & Commercialization
• 27 Asian countries adopted the UN
Resolution on the right to water &
sanitation but only few countries
implement it
• Heavy reliance on PPPs & privatization
as model of water service provision and
resource management
• IFI’s influence in policy
• Rise of Asian private water companies &
public companies acting like private
• Impacts: high prices, inequities,
corruption, corporate & regulatory
capture
7. Climate Crisis &
Asia’s Water
• Asia as hotspot for ‘water
wars’: transboundary
issues
• Energy-water nexus
• New forms of enclosures
through the ‘Green
economy’
• Climate financing & push
for more privatization
8. On the upside…
• Global rethink of
privatization
• Privatization is not
irreversible
• Remunicipalization
trends
• Successful struggles
against privatization
and commercialization
of water: what’s next?
10. Water Utilities in Asia: Mostly Public in Nature
Preliminary Profile of Water Utilities in Asia
Sub-region No. of Water
Utilities
Listed
No. of
Utilities
with Data
Average No.
of Service
Connections
Average
No. of
People
Served
Central Asia 3 3 103,056 1,238,865
East Asia 8 8 961,361 5,052,414
South Asia 13 13 320,590 3,685,044
Southeast Asia 622 147 61,731 243,046
Total 646 171 12,4963 799,881
Source: Buenaventura, Batistel, Manahan, “Spring of Hope” in Alternatives to Privatization: Public Options for Essential Services in the
Global South , 2012.
11. Criteria to Consider when Discussing
Alternatives (based on Municipal
Services Project)
• Participation
• Equity
• Efficiency
• Quality
• Accountability
• Transparency
• Workplace
• Sustainability
• Solidarity
• Public Ethos
• Transferability
13. Reinvigorating Public Water Systems
• Existing public modes of water service delivery
that were no longer appropriate for the service
improve their systems through PuPs or Public-community
partnerships
• Some Forms/Examples:
– Cooperation between water utilities and non-profit
organizations, residents to deliver service in urban,
slum communities (e.g. Tinagong Paraiso-Bacolod City
Water District in the Philippines)
– Strengthening labor-management cooperation within
a public utility (e.g. technical and management
training for managers and workers of water service
providers through benchmarking in the Phils)
14. • New forms of local cooperation and not-for-profit
partnerships between and among public water
operators, communities, consumers, trade unions
and other key groups
• Public Public Partnerships (PuPs), Public-
Community Partnerships, Community-Community
Partnerships: public as people (People-People
Partnerships) not only state or government
• PUPs as one form or way of democratizing water
& tool to implement the HR to water & sanitation
• PuPs came from the water justice movements and
through the work of the Reclaiming Public Water
network
15. Innovative Models of Public Service Delivery
• Not Private or Old-Style Public (corrupt,
inefficient, un-transparent)
• Forms/examples:
– Strengthening of public water utilities through a
strong public ethos and pro-worker workplace (e.g.
Bangkok’s Metropolitan Waterworks Authority)
– Democratization experiments in Tamil Nadu- India
– Upstream-downstream cooperation/multipartite
cooperation to protect watersheds (e.g. Sibalom
watershed in Antique vs. mining )
– Co-management to solve water use, access and
conflicts/competing rights
16. Associative/Cooperative/Community-
Managed Water Systems &
Partnerships
• Bridges the gap in water service provision in
Southeast and South Asia, especially when
central public utilities could not provide water to
them
• Self-help initiatives and organizing of ‘waterless’
communities
• Often, are confronted with the challenge of no
support from the local or national government;
community assumes risks and investments
• Even in privatized set up, community initiatives
are ensuring that water services remain in the
public or community control and domain
17. Example: Bagong Silang Community Water Service
Cooperative in the west zone of
Metro Manila, Philippines
• Community-based water
system, managed by water
users
• Ensured a cheaper, safe, clean
drinking water for urban poor
households through a
cooperative, democratic
control and peer-level
monitoring and enforcement of
rules
• Supported by a local NGO-provided
trainings/capacity
building
Access to water supply services: “defined as the availability of at least 20 litres per person per day (lifeline) from an "improved" source within 1 kilometre of the user's dwelling” (Joint Monitoring Program on WSS of WHO/UNICEF)
“Improved” water sources include: household connections, public standpipes, boreholes, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater collection; likely to have access to safe (or potable) water
Not improved: unprotected dugwells and springs, vendor provided water, bottled water, tankers
