New Water Policy and Practice Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014 | Page 22

New Water Policy and Practice - Volume 1, Number 1 - Fall 2014

Engaging and Incentivizing the Private Sector: An
Emerging Opportunity for the Water World
Dr. Zafar AdeelA
In this opinion editorial, New Water Policy and Practice International Advisory Board member Dr Zafar Adeel (Director of the United Nations University
Institute for Water, Environment and Health, Canada) gives his thoughts on
the role of the private sector in solving the world’s water problems. Adeel opens
by pointing out some of the failures of current approaches, identifies emerging
opportunities that did not exist before now, describes the challenges of engaging
and incentivising the private sector and finishes with the need to create positive
incentives and effective regulations to support private sector contributions to
resolution of the world’s water problems.
Keywords: private sector; water governance; privatization; regulation; incentives

Constraints of Business-as-Usual shrinks in many water-scarce regions of the
world due to climatic changes and as water
Approaches
quality diminishes due to enhanced urban
and industrial activities, also remains a major
challenge (WWAP 2012). While a UN-Water
report highlighted that over 80% of the countries have undertaken reforms to improve
water management (UNEP 2012), the situation in most developing countries remains
far from satisfactory. There are three key gaps
that limit most developing countries’ ability to respond to their water resource management challenges: shortage of adequately
trained and qualified human resources, lack
of access to appropriate and adequate technological capacity, and insufficient allocation
of financial resources.

There is also the specter of transboundary water-sharing conflicts that refuses to go away. While the myth of ‘water-wars’
has been debunked through research and
recent history, most recent studies point to
the challenges of effectively managing wa-

W

e all know the well-recited figures
about access to water and sanitation: the latest JMP report cited about 700 million people without access
to an improved source of water (WHO and
UNICEF, 2014). However, the actual situation on the ground is even worse: the number of people without safe drinking water is
about two billion (WWAP, 2014). Concealed
beneath this lack-of-access-to-a-critical-service story lies a major societal driver that impinges on human health, social development,
economic productivity, primary education,
and livelihood opportunities. Failure to address this challenge, therefore, can effectively reverse development gains made in many
developing countries and block the achievement of new goals.

The effective management of water
resources, particularly as water availability
A

United Nations University, Canada
20