Bridge over Troubled Waters: Navigating the Policy Divide
Photo: Civil Society Team
The World Bank has been engaging a wide variety of policy advocacy CSOs on the issues of access, rights, and financing of urban water and sanitation programs over the past five years. Of particular concern to CSOs have been the issues of water privatization, cost-recovery approaches, and lack of affordable water services for low income populations in Bank-financed water and sanitation projects. For its part, the Bank has welcomed this dialogue because it clearly shares with civil society the goal of extending universal coverage to the poor in developing countries and improving delivery effectiveness. Within this context, the Bank has undertaken a watershed process of meetings and joint research with leading NGOs, trade unions, and research centers. The Bank’s most significant civil society interlocutor to emerge during this period has been the Freshwater Action Network (FAN), which is an international coalition of several hundred CSOs in Africa, Asia, and Latin America who work on water and sanitation issues.
Engagement activities have included a two-day workshop on urban water and sanitation during the World Bank Water Week in February 2007 in Washington, DC, a Political Café discussion on the right to water during the Annual Meetings in October 2008 (see photo), and a “scoping study” on how to promote more systematic dialogue on water and sanitation issues. The “FAN–World Bank Scoping Study about Developing Dialogue between the World Bank and Civil Society Organizations about Urban Water and Sanitation Services”, which was carried out by Public World, was a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the characteristics, constraints, and opportunities for Bank-CSO engagement on the issue of water. More recently, FAN and the Bank have been working on several research products including developing a “handbook” for CSOs on how to engage the Bank around water policies, and producing a “guidance note” for Bank staff on how to engage civil society. Both are geared to generate lessons and encourage greater Bank, government, and civil society engagement. The most recent initiative was a video conference held on April 21, 2010 between several dozen FAN members and Bank managers / staff to discuss the draft handbook and guidance note.
The promising and intriguing aspect of this initiative is that water has always been one of the most controversial and complex issues for Bank – CSO policy dialogue. One only need remember the citizen protests in Cochabamba, Bolivia when the system was privatized a few years ago, which many attributed to the Bank even though it was not directly involved in the decision. What has made this dialogue so challenging is that it has tried to bridge the views of water as both a human right and a service which must be financed. While there are still some disagreements, this carefully constructed process of dialogue and joint research has already resulted in a better understanding of each other’s roles in advocating for and financing water services. The hope is that this engagement process will eventually lead to greater government – civil society collaboration at the country level geared to promoting affordable and clean water for the poor.