World Water Forum: spotlight on financing water and sanitation
As you are probably aware, the next World Water Forum will be held in Marseille in March 2012. The preparatory process is helping with the distillation of clear targets for a series of priority areas that have been deemed important for the sector. To be clear, the Forum does not actually have the ability to set binding targets on politicians and other stakeholders. But judging by the mess that has dominated climate change negotiations over the last few years, it is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather, the definition of targets gives an opportunity to the sector to take stock of where things stand and how they could be improved by 2015 and beyond. And everybody is invited to participate in this exercise, via the Platform of solutions accessible via the Forum’s website.
The Secretariat has identified “financing” as a critical “condition for success” and a group of interested institutions is now busy working on refining the associated targets and potential solutions. The European Investment Bank and the Agence Française de Développement are leading this effort as core group coordinators. Other institutions are involved such as the Water and Sanitation Programme (working on estimating the needs for financing software in the sector), Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (identifying innovative financial solutions that can help improve services for the poor) or the United Nations Development Programme (examining how to mobilise new financing from local governments in the North that could directly contribute to local governments in the South, following the example of the Oudin-Santini law in France and other examples).
Trémolet Consulting is working with all these institutions to help sharpen the targets and identify key overall messages. One of our recent publications for the OECD, "Meeting the Challenge of Financing Water and Sanitation: Tools and Approaches" helps to clarify the challenge and provides an overview of all relevant issues.
As part of this process, it would be great to hear from you about potential solutions, either via the website or in person. And just a world of practical advice: hotels are apparently booking extremely fast and they are in short supply. Although Marseilles is the second largest French city, it has “only” 850,000 people living there and is not used to such an invasion. So make sure you secure a room for the forum and possibly beyond, as this part of the world can be absolutely wonderful in early Spring (do not miss the nearby Calanques de Cassis under any circumstances).