What can the UN Water Conference deliver?

With the UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi less than a month away, more questions than answers remain. What can this gathering achieve? What has evolved since the 2023 conference? And, most importantly, how does this conference clear a path forward to deliver safe water and sanitation to the billions who still lack them? The conference website notes that the world “must surge investment, innovation and political will towards the accelerated implementation” of the water sector's universal access agenda. But is another international conference the best place to focus our efforts? 

Don’t get me wrong; I’ve noted in the past that whenever we can focus key decision-makers on the challenges in our sector, it’s a worthwhile effort. But I can’t help but note that the topics being raised in this conference  agenda have been the focus of multiple gatherings across the globe for decades. Perhaps the most promising and positive outcome would be an honest discussion of: 1) what hasn’t worked; and 2) how we can pivot, and what should be prioritised to address those shortcomings.

So, let’s dig in….

What hasn’t worked?

Summarising this in 1,000 words is impossible but there is a consensus on many points. The sector has evolved into two distinct sub-sectors. The first is the “haves”, who are water providers with financial resources, good governance, access to data, technology, the ability to raise capital, and work as an equal partner with the private sector. The other is the “have nots” who lack nearly all of these characteristics. A major challenge now is that the world is focused on the former and there isn’t enough emphasis and the right kind of help being provided to the latter. 

At the same time, we can’t build our way towards universal access, although we haven’t stopped trying. We’re still infatuated with building infrastructure and attracting private capital. Just look at the goals of our latest initiative, Water Forward, which focuses on big numbers – by default in big countries. We’re pushing numbers, not solutions. 

It’s time to be honest and acknowledge that, at least in the “have nots,” we’ve generally failed miserably as we spend too much time building and not nearly enough money, political capital, and time addressing our governance, administrative and regulatory systems. 

In addition, we’ve been too narrow in our approach. The vast majority of the money used to build and manage water systems comes from users or the public purse. Yet we don’t put enough focus on the critical need to improve the utilisation rate of our national and local water budgets. If you read much of the water finance literature, you’d think that the private sector was the dominant financier when, in reality, it’s minuscule – especially in emerging markets. 

Along the same lines, we remain stuck on public-private partnerships as the only private financing tool as we minimise the scope and use of other, straightforward financial instruments such as bonds or even plain vanilla commercial loans. We spend too much time trying to make under-performing utilities run marathons when they’re still learning to walk. And these issues are underpinned by the fact that we don’t acknowledge that the governance and regulatory systems simply don’t have the capacity to design or implement these complex, long term, financial transactions.

In summary, too often we’re not focused on the right solutions because we haven’t identified the right problems.

How can we pivot and what should we prioritise?

Ironically, identifying what needs to change may be one of the easier parts of this equation. Rather the challenge is implementation. For example. in order to attract more political capital and investment in emerging markets, we should focus on revenue streams, improving efficiency, and enhancing better administrative and regulatory systems. Of course we need infrastructure investment, but that has to be balanced with better management and capacity. We can also spend less time on large vanity projects which often aren’t replicable, and instead focus on foundational operational necessities.

To complement this, let’s start using a straightforward, objective, measurement tool to define efficiency. Fortunately we have one. Independent credit ratings assess technical and financial efficiencies and governance arrangements. They are easily understood, independent, and have been successfully used for 100 years. Frankly, if local policy-makers don’t like credit ratings, they are certainly free to come up with another objective indicator. The sector just requires a verifiable measurement tool.

We also should focus on prioritising better. Over the last decade, the water sector has become more stovepiped, with strong advocates suggesting various priorities whether they are reuse, circular economy, digitalisation, desalination, etc. Each of these are critical but, if you are running an under-resourced water utility, you simply don’t have the luxury to deal with all these issues. Instead, you have to focus, prioritise and then build a team to tackle the most pressing issues. 

This also means improving the utilisation of our public resources. Private investment only becomes viable once the public’s money is used efficiently and wisely. 

Finally, we should spend more effort on building local systems, management, and consensus. Too often local leaders abdicate their responsibility and defer to national government or one of the multilateral development banks for the answers and\or leadership. Perhaps we should spend our precious resources attending fewer international conferences and more on informal roundtables at the local tea houses or taverns with key decision makers and customers listening, learning, taking responsibility, and solving local water delivery issues. 

None of this is easy, but my experience is that many water professionals in the trenches already know how to move forward and they’re as frustrated by “quick fixes” or big numbers as the rest of us. This will take time, leadership and money but the sooner we focus on the real challenges and prioritise solutions, the quicker we’ll start to see some tangible results. Frankly, we’ve been waiting too long.