Just Water Partnerships: what are they and can they align financing for water security?
With extreme weather threatening water supplies, a new solution is needed to address the financial barriers to achieving universal access to water. Just Water Partnerships have been proposed as a new mechanism to address these gaps, ensure water security and accelerate climate resilience. But how can these partnerships be realised?
“Most dangerously, we will fail on climate change if we fail on water.”
As we get closer to COP29, the words of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water’s latest report echo in our minds.
Extreme weather events are becoming more common in all parts of the world, and with them often comes the loss of water supply and sanitation services, and the ability to practise good hygiene – Hurricane Helene in the United States, floods in Nepal, and droughts in southern Africa are recent and painful illustrations of this reality.
However, water resources and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services are often not central to climate change conversations, ignoring the fact that water serves a dual role: how we feel the impacts of climate change and the medium for how we adapt to climate change successfully.
Solving this water conundrum will require innovative and holistic solutions, and money going to the right places. To date, financing – even blended financing of public and private sources – has not accelerated social benefits, and traditional economics that focus on a financial return on investment have neglected the merit good of water, leaving it undervalued by financiers and governments alike.
Overarchingly, the private sector does not invest in rural, isolated communities which are deemed unlikely to produce much, if any, return on investment or market opportunity. Attempts by governments or multilateral development banks to reduce this risk by taking on some of it themselves has not been enough to encourage private sector investment in remote areas. At the same time, research shows that in many places the most vulnerable are not benefitting from government subsidies (PDF) for water supply and sanitation; instead, they are paying 10% to 20% more.
A new financing mechanism
A new mechanism is urgently needed to address these financial shortcomings and solve the water challenges that are causing us to fail on climate change. One option, proposed by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, is Just Water Partnerships. These would be a national platform (led by a country’s government) that brings together diverse stakeholders – national and sub-national government, multilateral and regional banks, other financial institutions, and civil society organisations – with a shared vision of creating a more water-secure future that serves vulnerable communities and protects ecosystems. As a partnership, these stakeholders could then support investments and catalyse greater private finance by strengthening the enabling environment and reducing and sharing investment risk.
Such platforms are not new. There are many examples of coordinated mechanisms for overseeing investment in a given location, such as the One WASH National Plan in Ethiopia, which pulls together all the work happening related to WASH. A Just Water Partnership would do that for WASH, but also for other types of water, such as that from rivers, lakes and crop irrigation.
What is new about this concept is the additional application of a “justice” or “equity” filter to the decision-making process. This would help ensure that investments are distributed more broadly than they are at present, and therefore ensure that the most marginalised or vulnerable are no longer left behind. It is this aspect, so in sync with WaterAid’s mission to ensure universal access to safe, sustainable and affordable water and sanitation services, that attracts us to this concept.
But what is “just” water, and how would we apply an “equity filter” in reality? These are the questions we have been asking at forums such as World Water Week and the UN General Assembly, and will continue to ask moving forward.
Based on our own assessment, as well as reflections from peers, we believe that a clear definition and a subsequent set of guiding principles are needed as a first step to help those interested in establishing Just Water Partnerships. This would provide a flexible framework, grounded in principles, but would allow for designs that fit with the culture and context of an individual country. In some cases, this may simply involve applying the principles to an existing national coordination platform rather than creating something entirely new.
It was exciting to see last week that the Global Commission expanded on what Just Water Partnerships could be in its Economics of Water report (PDF). We are encouraged by the focus on a strategy that “articulates the interests of all groups ... including communities whose voices have been often ignored”. We look forward to engaging with others who advocate for financial mechanisms to be used more boldly to use this inclusive, water-centric strategy to build resilience to climate change.
Interested in getting involved in Just Water Partnerships? Contact Lesley Pories.
Top image: Mubarak Yakubu, 21, collects dirty water into a plastic jerry can from a pond in Kwaja village, Adamawa. Nigeria.
