IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v44y2007i8p1559-1579.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Water for All: How To Combine Public Management with Commercial Practice for the Benefit of the Poor?

Author

Listed:
  • Alan Gilbert

    (Department of Geography, Pearson Building, University College London, Gower Street, London, WCIE 6BT, UK, ucfaagg@ucl.ac.uk)

Abstract

Water is critical to improving the health and welfare of the expanding urban populations of the South. Unfortunately, few cities in poor countries have managed to develop institutions able to supply the poor with water, let alone take away the waste. One city that has managed to do so is Bogota, Colombia. The results of this public company are impressive and have been achieved by adopting some elements of neo-liberal economic thought and by maintaining independence from political pressure. Recently, however, the water company's operations, and particularly its efficiency and pricing policy, have come under attack from a new left-of-centre mayor. The paper explores the legitimacy of some of the attacks and examines whether they constitute fair political debate or a means of undermining what, by the standards of the South, is an effective company.

Suggested Citation

  • Alan Gilbert, 2007. "Water for All: How To Combine Public Management with Commercial Practice for the Benefit of the Poor?," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 44(8), pages 1559-1579, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:44:y:2007:i:8:p:1559-1579
    DOI: 10.1080/00420980701373461
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/00420980701373461
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00420980701373461?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kristin Komives & Vivien Foster & Jonathan Halpern & Quentin Wodon, 2005. "Water, Electricity, and the Poor : Who Benefits from Utility Subsidies?," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6361, December.
    2. Cabezas B., Mabel & Lahera, Eugenio, 2000. "Governance and institutional development of the Chilean economy," Sede de la CEPAL en Santiago (Estudios e Investigaciones) 31387, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    3. Glewwe, P. & Hall, G., 1992. "Poverty and Inequality during Unorthodox Adjustment," Papers 86, World Bank - Living Standards Measurement.
    4. Ioannis N. Kessides, 2005. "Infrastructure Privatization and Regulation: Promises and Perils," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 20(1), pages 81-108.
    5. Matthew Gandy, 2004. "Rethinking urban metabolism: water, space and the modern city," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(3), pages 363-379, December.
    6. World Bank, 2006. "Approaches to Private Participation in Water Services : A Toolkit," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6982, December.
    7. Philippe Marin & Ada Karina Izaguirre, 2006. "Private Participation in Water : Toward a New Generation of Projects," World Bank Publications - Reports 10725, The World Bank Group.
    8. McPhail, Alexander A., 1993. "The "five percent rule" for improved water service: Can households afford more?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 963-973, June.
    9. Crane, Randall, 1994. "Water markets, market reform and the urban poor: Results from Jakarta, Indonesia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 71-83, January.
    10. Ardeshir Sepehri & Robert Chernomas, 2001. "Are user charges efficiency- and equity-enhancing? A critical review of economic literature with particular reference to experience from developing countries," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(2), pages 183-209.
    11. Eugenio Lahera & Mabel Cabezas, 2000. "Governance and institutional development of the Chilean economy," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(8), pages 1087-1109.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schwartz, Klaas & Tutusaus, Mireia & Savelli, Elisa, 2017. "Water for the urban poor: Balancing financial and social objectives through service differentiation in the Kenyan water sector," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 22-31.
    2. Olivia Jensen & Namrata Chindarkar, 2019. "Sustaining Reforms in Water Service Delivery: the Role of Service Quality, Salience, Trust and Financial Viability," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 33(3), pages 975-992, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Acey, Charisma & Kisiangani, Joyce & Ronoh, Patrick & Delaire, Caroline & Makena, Evelyn & Norman, Guy & Levine, David & Khush, Ranjiv & Peletz, Rachel, 2019. "Cross-subsidies for improved sanitation in low income settlements: Assessing the willingness to pay of water utility customers in Kenyan cities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 160-177.
    2. Yusep Suparman & Henk Folmer & Johan H.L. Oud, 2016. "The willingness to pay for in-house piped water in urban and rural Indonesia," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(2), pages 407-426, June.
    3. Antonio Estache & Liam Wren-Lewis, 2009. "Toward a Theory of Regulation for Developing Countries: Following Jean-Jacques Laffont's Lead," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(3), pages 729-770, September.
    4. Tan, Jeff, 2012. "The Pitfalls of Water Privatization: Failure and Reform in Malaysia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(12), pages 2552-2563.
    5. Céline Nauges & Dale Whittington, 2010. "Estimation of Water Demand in Developing Countries: An Overview," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 25(2), pages 263-294, August.
    6. Philippe Marin, 2009. "Public-Private Partnerships for Urban Water Utilities : A Review of Experiences in Developing Countries," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 2703, December.
    7. VKaren Bakker, Michelle Kooy, Nur Endah Shofiani, and Ernst-Jan Martijn, 2006. "Disconnected: Poverty, Water Supply and Development in Jakarta, Indonesia," Human Development Occasional Papers (1992-2007) HDOCPA-2006-01, Human Development Report Office (HDRO), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
    8. Rodriguez, D., 2014. "Applying results-based financing in water investments," IWMI Working Papers H046875, International Water Management Institute.
    9. Jiang, Zhujun & Lin, Boqiang, 2014. "The perverse fossil fuel subsidies in China—The scale and effects," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 411-419.
    10. He, Xiaoping & Reiner, David, 2016. "Electricity demand and basic needs: Empirical evidence from China's households," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 212-221.
    11. Van Houtven, George L. & Pattanayak, Subhrendu K. & Usmani, Faraz & Yang, Jui-Chen, 2017. "What are Households Willing to Pay for Improved Water Access? Results from a Meta-Analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 126-135.
    12. C. Pezon, 2018. "Retrospective analysis of the Urban Water Supply sector in Senegal: a PPP over time," Post-Print hal-02012229, HAL.
    13. Ramesh, Niranjana, 2022. "An experiment with the minor geographies of major cities: infrastructural relations among the fragments," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114952, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Luisa Moretto, 2007. "Urban governance and multilateral aid organizations: The case of informal water supply systems," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 2(4), pages 345-370, December.
    15. Alan Gilbert, 1994. "Third World Cities: Poverty, Employment, Gender Roles and the Environment during a Time of Restructuring," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 31(4-5), pages 605-633, May.
    16. Bernard Tenenbaum & Ada Karina Izaguirre, 2007. "Private Participation in Electricity : The Challenge of Achieving Commercial Viability and Improving Services," World Bank Publications - Reports 10686, The World Bank Group.
    17. -, 2000. "Equity, development and citizenship," Documentos de posición del período de sesiones de la Comisión 14969, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    18. Vanesa Castán Broto & Harriet Bulkeley, 2013. "Maintaining Climate Change Experiments: Urban Political Ecology and the Everyday Reconfiguration of Urban Infrastructure," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(6), pages 1934-1948, November.
    19. Wodon, Quentin & Banerjee, Sudeshna & Diallo, Amadou Bassirou & Foster, Vivien, 2009. "Is low coverage of modern infrastructure services in African cities due to lack of demand or lack of supply ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4881, The World Bank.
    20. Chen, Shaoqing & Chen, Bin, 2017. "Coupling of carbon and energy flows in cities: A meta-analysis and nexus modelling," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 194(C), pages 774-783.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:44:y:2007:i:8:p:1559-1579. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.