Commission on Sustainable Development

Preparatory Meeting

6^th & 7^th Meetings (AM & PM)

Sustainable development preparatory meeting focuses on ways

 

to improve lives of slum dwellers, urban poor

 

Discussions Also Continue on Water, Sanitation

Recognizing that the locus of global poverty was now moving to cities, the Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting of the Commission on Sustainable Development today continued weighing policy options and possible actions to help boost global access to clean water, sanitation and adequate housing -- spotlighting measures aimed at improving the lives of slum dwellers and the urban poor.

The four interactive panels organized by the Meeting, laying the groundwork for the Commission’s first–ever policy segment -- set for 11 to 22 April -– also considered measures to help countries stay on track to meet the commitments and targets agreed at the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit for Sustainable Development, as well as the Millennium Development Goals, which specifically called for significant improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.

But as the morning’s discussions got under way, several delegations noted a paradox that had emerged in the five years since the Millennium Summit:  With
32 per cent of the world’s urban population, or nearly 1 billion people, estimated to be living in slums, it now appeared that the 100 million target fell far short of the reality and the number of people living in such dire conditions was now around the 1 billion mark.  Indeed, if this gap were not rapidly addressed, the crisis was such that the world could see that figure double in the next 30 years.

Nigeria’s representative said that the Millennium Goals, as they stood, appeared to leave perhaps 900 million slum dwellers without relief.  To address that deficit, international actors, in cooperation with local authorities, must change their projections and focus on radical policy changes in the area of urban poverty.  He said that in 1976, when Nigeria moved its capital from Lagos to Abuja, authorities had had to tackle the entire range of settlement and resettlement issues, and had quickly become aware of rapid urbanization and its attendant increases in slums and informal settlements.

Nigeria had learned that governments alone could not address the needs of slum dwellers, he said, adding that his country was like many other poor nations, where the private sector was not sufficiently developed to ramp up effective housing sector partnerships.  Their economies were not fully developed either and depended on unique commodities, which, in turn, were susceptible to market fluctuations.  So, one of the keys was to scale up domestic and global environments for the mobilization of resources.  There must also be greater policy coherence on critical debt issues so that heavily indebted poor countries could meet their millennium targets.

A representative of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) said that it was time to upgrade the Millennium Declaration’s slums target, because, at present, it would only address one tenth of the problem.  He also supported focusing on the urban context of the debate because if the rapid and ongoing urbanization of poverty was not directly addressed, it would be impossible for poor countries to meet the internationally agreed development targets.  Improving the lives of slum dwellers should involve combating HIV, improving environmental sustainability, and addressing gender inequality in the most efficient manner, he added.

The key challenge was access to housing finances for the urban poor, he added.  While domestically generated capital remained the major source of funding for human settlements development, including water and sanitation, international finances, driven by foreign investment or public/private partnerships, among other things, were equally essential.  He encouraged governments to promote or scale up microfinance schemes and provide finance institutions with a regulatory environment conducive to growth, efficiency and sustainability of that sector.

Other speakers noted that while some progress has been recorded in achieving the Johannesburg targets, future growth in slum settlements was expected in almost all regions of the world, owing to both high natural population growth and rural-to-urban migration.  Increasing public and private investment, improving access to land and minimizing excessive regulation of its use, and substantially improving access to water, sanitation, energy and transportation would be among some of the key ongoing and future policy reforms.

During an afternoon panel on providing education and job opportunities for the urban poor, delegations stressed that employment opportunities for the slum dwellers were scarce, and were mostly in the informal sector, where wages were extremely low, and job security was non-existent.  They stressed the essential role that local authorities could play in designing appropriate policies to support the development of small enterprises.  They also stressed support for civil society partnerships, education and capacity-building, and programmes such as the UN-HABITAT “Cities without Slums” initiative.

The representative of the United States suggested promoting programmes which matched skills, training and apprenticeships for urban youth to access jobs in local labour markets.  He also recommended the mobilization of domestic capital markets to invest in human settlements using appropriate risk-sharing mechanisms to reduce lending costs in slum communities.  It was also necessary to prevent and combat exploitative child labour and to provide children with education and rehabilitation, and their families with viable economic alternatives.

A parallel panel followed up on the discussions yesterday on the provision of adequate sanitation, and focused on capacity-building and financing for meeting sanitation goals and targets.  China’s representative said this morning that while an additional 1 billion people had gained access to improved sanitation in the past decade, 2 billion more people still needed to be provided with such access before the sanitation target could be met.  Providing adequate sanitation services was an increasingly tough challenge for the larger developing countries.

The Meeting continued considering water-related issues in a second parallel panel today focused on strengthening monitoring and evaluation programmes, and on ways and means to secure finance for water-related investments.  While some delegations felt there was a need to establish new mechanisms for monitoring, Norway’s representative was among several that did not share that belief, and called for strengthening existing mechanisms.

The Preparatory Meeting will reconvene tomorrow, 3 March, to hold simultaneous interactive discussions on water and sanitation and creating incentives for effective partnerships, and continuing on human settlements in the morning and afternoon.

Background

The Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting for the thirteenth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) met today to hold simultaneous interactive discussions on water and human settlements in the morning, and on sanitation and human settlements in the afternoon.  (For background on the week-long session, see Press Release ENV/DEV/823 issued on 28 February.)

Interactive Discussion – Sanitation (AM)

Following on the discussions yesterday on the provision of adequate sanitation, the Commission focused this morning on capacity-building and financing for meeting sanitation goals and targets.  Introducing the topic, Commission Vice-Chairman KHALED ELBAKLY (Egypt) noted that domestic capital was the principal source of finance for improved sanitation.  However, there were many challenges in mobilizing such resources.  External finance could provide important additional resources for funding sanitation needs.

The economic, social and environmental benefits from improved sanitation and hygiene were estimated to range from $3 to $34 per $1 invested, he continued.  The benefits were mainly in the form of reduced mortality, improved health, reduced costs of illness and higher productivity.

At the national level, it could be asked what types of sewerage fees might result in better mobilization of financial resources to maintain and expand the systems.  Also, how could subsidies be better designed and targeted to the poor?  As most developing countries could not achieve their sanitation goals and targets without the support of the international donor community, another issue to address was how donor countries could be encouraged to allocate adequate official development assistance (ODA) to sanitation programmes.

While an additional 1 billion people had gained access to improved sanitation in the past decade, 2 billion more people still needed to be provided with such access before the sanitation target could be met, stated China’s representative.  Providing adequate sanitation services was an increasingly tough challenge for developing countries with large populations.  As a large country, China was currently focusing on the development of sanitation facilities in the rural areas.  It had set the target of achieving 55 per cent sanitation coverage in rural areas by 2005, and 65 per cent by 2010.

Among the measures China had taken in that regard was formulating widely applicable policies and measures in light of the specific conditions of the country, bringing in managerial skills, technology and funds from abroad, and involving local governments, non-governmental organization s (NGOs), women and youth organizations in the process.

Noting that meeting the water and sanitation targets by 2015 would require dramatic scaling up of efforts, Norway’s representative said the starting point should be clear.  Poor people and poor countries should get priority.  The challenge of financing sanitation was not only in finding funds, but in spending them on activities that promoted sustainability.  Among other things, it was necessary to promote the use of appropriate local technologies, to open up and promote the use of local capital markets, and to create a favourable environment for public and private utilities.

The role of the private sector was highlighted by several speakers, including the representative of Switzerland, who felt that the way forward was to focus on demand-driven policies.  Private sector involvement, as well as effective subsidies, was important to meet that demand.  It was important to develop the role of small- and medium-size entrepreneurs.  In addition, governments and civil society must work together to promote an enabling environment and create markets for sanitation and hygiene.

On the other hand, a representative of workers and trade unions emphasized that sanitation was an essential public service, which could not easily be turned into a business opportunity.  He agreed that there were many good examples of projects in developing countries and different options for funding those projects.  However, private sector involvement, in terms of management and operation, did not work, simply because the economics did not work.  It was futile to talk of full cost recovery in the provision of sanitation services to the poorest of the poor.  It was necessary to recognize that people wanted sanitation as an essential public service, and to focus on how that could be financed.

On the issue of financing, the representative of the United States said that a policy option that could be taken at the national level was to establish a national policy to provide financial assistance to construct publicly owned waste-treatment plants.  Also, seed money could be provided for low-interest loans to communities for water infrastructure projects.  He believed there was no lack of capital for investment-worthy projects.  What was lacking was investment-worthy projects.  In that connection, he highlighted the need to establish national or regional project-development facilities to assist in preparing infrastructure projects for investment and creating opportunities for private sector development.

Like other speakers, the representative of South Africa stressed the need for an institutional home for sanitation, as well as the link between sanitation and meeting the other targets, both in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation and the Millennium Development Goals, related to poverty eradication.  At the national level, she noted, sanitation was often dispersed between different sectoral departments.  At the international level, as well, countries were looking for a home for sanitation.

The representative of Luxembourg, speaking on behalf of the European Union, stressed that capacity-building should begin with awareness raising and hygiene education.  Also, capacity-building in sanitation should focus on the lowest appropriate levels and actors, including households and schools.  It also needed to respond to local demands.  Local communities should decide for themselves what services and facilities were most appropriate.  Local ownership was a key prerequisite for the use and acceptance of sanitation facilities.  Sanitation, he added, should not be treated in isolation from other services delivery and planning.

While it was easy to dwell on the fact that 2.6 billion people today lacked sanitation services, said the representative of the scientific and technological communities, it was also recognized that investments in science and technology had provided those services to more than 3 billion and would continue to be crucial in bringing sanitation to the unserved.  There was enormous benefit in investments that promoted cost-effective, environmentally sound, low technology, and locally operated sanitation systems.

At the same time, he added, those investments would provide little enduring impact if they were not accompanied by investments in capable practitioners.  The lack of trained professionals in those areas that required systematic upgrading of sanitation services would interfere with the attainment of the 2015 target for sanitation, as well as the longer-term aim to provide universal sanitation.  He proposed increasing, by 50 per cent over current levels, investments in advanced training institutes and collegiate-level fellowship programmes for environmental engineering, aquatic ecosystem studies, and monitoring technology and applications.

Among the other issues raised were the need to include women’s organizations in capacity-building and resource mobilization; the need for South-South cooperation; the need to understand the costs and benefits of relevant technologies; the need to develop “bankable” projects which could attract investment; and the particular sanitation challenges faced by small island developing States.

Interactive Discussion – Human Settlements (AM)

This morning’s panel discussion focused on policy options and possible actions to provide improved housing and associated services for the poor.

Opening the discussion, moderator and Vice-Chair SHIN BOO-NAM (Republic of Korea) recalled that during the introductory expert-level panel that had kicked off the Meeting’s human settlement discussions yesterday afternoon, speakers had stressed that meeting the needs of the poor required a mix of policies and measure that sought to prevent the further growth of slums and informal settlements and to improve housing and living condition in existing slums.

Citing a few examples that participants could draw on for today’s discussion, he said that one option could be to adopt proactive policies for acquiring and setting aside land for low-income housing, through reclaiming unused public lands or securing land from private land markets.  Another example could be the support of self-help shelter movements in slum communities, enabling residents to fulfil their housing needs within their own budgets.  Experience had shown that such initiatives had been most successful when supported by investments in infrastructure and the provision of services along with measures to strengthen tenure security and to create employment opportunities.

When the floor was opened, the representative of Jamaica, speaking on behalf of the “Group of 77” developing countries and China, stressed that, while many small and poor countries were committed to meeting international human settlement goals, rehabilitating or upgrading housing, particularly in informal sectors, was extremely complex and costly.  Pressing ahead would require planning in urban, as well as rural, areas and would have to include initiatives to cover water, sanitation facilities, hospitals and roads, among other things.

There was no single solution for all developing countries, he said, adding that he was certain that information that could help was out there, but the international community must do better about finding ways to get that know-how and wisdom to the people and communities who really needed it.  Along with better information-sharing -- particularly in the technology area -- he called for greater attention to the mobilization of financial resources for poverty alleviation, and to promote foreign and local investment earmarked for upgrading and safeguarding human settlements.

A representative of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) said the key challenge was access to housing finances for the urban poor.  While domestically generated capital remained the major source of funding for human settlements development, including water and sanitation, international finances, driven by foreign investment or public/private partnerships, were equally essential.  He encouraged governments to promote or scale up microfinance schemes and provide finance institutions with a regulatory environment conducive to the growth, efficiency and sustainability of that sector.

In addition, he said that focusing on the urban context of the debate was critical to meeting all the relevant Millennium Development Goals, as well as the commitments agreed at the Johannesburg Word Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).  If the rapid and ongoing urbanization of poverty was not directly addressed, it would be impossible to meet those goals. Improving the lives of slum dwellers should involve combating HIV, improving environmental sustainability, and addressing gender inequality in the most efficient manner.  He also said that it was time to upgrade the slums target set at the Millennium Summit, which had called for improving substantially, by 2020, the lives of 100 million slum dwellers.  Estimates had since revealed that the worldwide population of slum dwellers in the next decade would skyrocket to perhaps 1 billion people, so meeting the millennium target would only address one tenth of the problem.

Nigeria’s representative agreed that the Millennium Goals, as they stood, appeared to leave perhaps 900 million slum dwellers without relief.  The international community, in cooperation with local authorities, must shift the focus to radical and speedy policy change in the areas of urban poverty to address that deficit.  Turning to his country’s experience, he said that in 1976, when Nigeria moved its capital from Lagos to Abuja, authorities had had to tackle the entire range of settlement and resettlement issues.  Nigeria had quickly become aware of the rapid urbanization trend, as well as its attendant increase in slums and informal settlements.

Nigeria had learned that governments could not address all the needs of slum dwellers alone, he continued, adding that his country was also like many poor nations, where the private sector was not sufficiently developed to ramp up effective participatory partnerships in the housing sector. The economies of those countries were not fully developed either, and depended on unique commodities, which in turn were susceptible to fluctuations in the global marketplace.  So, one of the keys was to scale up domestic, as well as global, environments for the mobilization of resources. There must also be greater policy coherence on critical debt issues so that heavily indebted poor countries could meet their Millennium Goals.  He added that local governments could do their part, by, among other things, “opening the way” between urban and rural areas by upgrading roads, schools, basic services and other facilities.

Luxembourg’s representative, speaking on behalf of the European Union, called for social inclusion policies and actions that promoted individuals’ opportunities for housing improvements, empowering local authorities, promoting public/private partnerships, and prioritizing the creation of sound policies on secure tenure, particularly for women.  Pro-poor management was necessary to make the poor visible as citizens, particularly to urban planners, she added.

The representative of Norway was among the many speakers who stressed the importance of drawing on the inherent cultural and creative energy of cities to help tackle housing challenges.  Cities were the world’s cultural crossroads and were well suited to be engines of change for development and generating innovative ideas, he said.  By 2013, half the world’s population would live in cities, and the urban poor would shortly become the most important agents for social and economic change.  Norway saw the women and youth among the urban poor as most well placed to drive change, he said, calling for a people-centred approach to housing policies and investment options.

Calling attention to what she called a “glaring error” in the final report on human settlements from CSD-12 that was serving as one of the guides for the Meeting this week, a representative of non-governmental organizations expressed disappointment that the document omitted any reference to human rights.  Progressive promotion and protection of fundamental rights -- to housing, access to land and secure tenure, among others --  was critical to achieving sustainable human settlements, adequate shelter and basic services, she said.  States must be challenged to ensure those rights in national laws, regulations and implementation plans.  The final report for CSD-13 should add a separate section on each of the thematic areas, she suggested.

Offering a host of policy options and practical measures that could advance progress towards internationally agreed housing objectives, the representative of the United States suggested improving knowledge and technical skills of administrators responsible for medium- and long-term city development, and attracting people into the formal economy through home ownership.  Secure land tenure and home ownership had strong socio-economic and environmental impacts, he said.  He also suggested mobilizing local financial resources, through tax policy or reducing regulatory barriers, to attract local investment, and encouraging private banks to work with community organizations.

Interactive Panel Discussion – Human Settlements (PM)

In the afternoon, the Preparatory Meeting continued its interactive discussion on policy options and actions for human settlements, with a focus on creating jobs and promoting entrepreneurship to improve the livelihoods of the urban and rural poor.

Commission Vice-Chair HUSNIYYA MAMMADOVA (Azerbaijan) said that many developing countries were facing challenges as they tried to devise strategies to increase their cities’ productivity while supporting pro-poor economic growth. Policy and regulatory instruments that promoted new business start-ups and the development of small enterprises were crucial to the response.

She cited several relevant country-level initiatives included, among others, adoption of labour intensive measures in construction and infrastructure development, which could contribute to the provision of necessary services while providing employment opportunities and building the skills of the lower-skilled urban workforce.  The combination of labour-intensive methods with community contracting -– involving small-scale service providers –- presented advantages in terms of community empowerment, job creation, income generation and capacity-building.

A representative of women’s groups said grass-roots organization had been using microfinancing schemes to help upscale small businesses in poor urban areas.  With dwindling resources, women’s groups, particularly those that were headquartered in slum areas, were doing their best to promote education and better health.  Nevertheless, such groups would call for an increase in partnership opportunities and initiatives, which would increase their outreach abilities.  A representative of workers and trade unions added that job creation could be made part of infrastructure investment programmes, but that such jobs must be “good quality” jobs.  Moreover, municipal authorities should be charged with putting together plans on a stakeholder basis.

As she cited a host of successful small-scale initiatives under way to improve the living conditions of slums, Lesotho’s representative echoed the sentiment of other speakers who had told the Meeting that they were struggling to keep up with the driving force of rapid urbanization and expanding informal settlements.  Tackling that challenge required more focused long-term urban planning, which recognized local authorities and took on board the expertise of slum dwellers themselves.

Australia’s representative supported the view that persistent poverty in rural areas continued to drive rural-to-urban migration and, therefore, had to be addressed urgently.  He suggested a two-pronged approach that supported and promoted broad-based economic growth, as well as the rehabilitation of institutions at the community level in order to improve delivery of basic services.  He said that Australia also recognized that “one size would not fit all” in the area of human settlements and called for targeted, flexible policies.

Local economic development could not be overemphasized, said the representative of South Africa.  It provided cheaper labour and materials, and often drove public-private partnerships at the micro-level.  The representative of Côte d’Ivoire added, however, that local economic development plans needed to be bolstered by international resources, otherwise many good intentions would fall by the wayside.

The representative of the United States suggested promoting programmes which matched skills, training and apprenticeships for urban youth to access jobs in local labour markets.  He also recommended the mobilization of domestic capital markets to invest in human settlements using appropriate risk-sharing mechanisms to reduce lending costs in slum communities.  He also said that it was necessary to prevent and combat exploitative child labour and to provide children with education and rehabilitation, and their families with viable economic alternatives.

The representative of Chile said new and innovative ideas and responses were necessary, as were coordinated actions to solve the problems of the urban poor.  Chile had focused its efforts on the most vulnerable segments of its society, which he believed was the case for most countries.  But this engendered certain tensions between and among municipalities and communities, particularly over land rights and use.  That tension, he said, needed to be acknowledged and addressed.  Making headway required integration, consistency and coherence.  His Government had initiated a programme which pooled the resources and expertise of neighbouring municipalities.

A representative of non-governmental organizations read out the statement of the Human Settlements Caucus, which had earlier agreed that sustainable human settlements and adequate services for all were goals that could only be achieved through progressive policies that realized the universal right of housing, access to land, secure tenure and provision of infrastructure.

Interactive Discussion – Water (PM)

This afternoon’s discussion on water focused on strengthening monitoring and evaluation programmes, and on ways and means to secure finance for water-related investments.  There was an urgent need to monitor progress towards national and international goals and targets on water, providing a solid foundation for rational policy-making at the national and local levels.  Policy options might range from rehabilitating existing monitoring networks, to developing new data collection systems using new technologies, to coordinating national and international efforts in data collection.

Funding in the water sector in developing countries needed to be doubled from its current level if internationally agreed water-related goals were to be met.  In most developing countries, issues relating to the water sector had been absent in poverty-reduction strategies despite the increased recognition of the importance of water to poverty reduction.  The policy options being pursued included domestic resource mobilization, development assistance, partnerships with the private sector and civil society, and use of domestic capital markets.

Among the questions to be addressed in the area of monitoring, said Commission Chairperson DAGMARA BERBALK (Germany), was what to do about monitoring at the global level, and the interrelationship between local processes and national programmes.  Also, she hoped delegations would address how to strengthen the UNICEF/WMO Joint Monitoring Programme and make greater use of it.

The state of freshwater monitoring was completely inadequate at the global level, said a representative of the scientific and technological communities, making it difficult to assess progress towards national and international targets.  Information on water use and water engineering were practically non-existent.  There were new techniques that made it possible to identify chemicals in freshwater systems, but what was needed was universal application of such techniques to determine long-term impacts.  International collaboration for data collection, he added, should be used to resuscitate the debilitated information networks.

Limited information existed on water quality and quantity because some countries lacked the tools to gather such information, noted Canada’s representative.  Poor water quality, coupled with poor hygiene, was a major cause of ill-health.  The primary strategy in that regard was the use of science for elaborating quality standards.  Understanding the state of surface and groundwater was vital.  He would like to see CSD-13 to highlight the importance of awareness-raising.  It was Japan’s view that every country establish drinking water standards by referring to the WHO’s guidelines for drinking water quality.  Also, it was necessary to enhance capacity-building for monitoring drinking water quality.

While some delegations felt there was a need to establish new mechanisms for monitoring, Norway’s representative was among several that did not share that belief, and called for strengthening existing mechanisms.  The UNICEF/WMO Joint Monitoring Programme must be strengthened as the key global mechanism to monitor access to water supply.  Also, bilateral agencies should provide more funding and avoid setting up parallel structures.

Further, she felt “UN Water” – the United Nations inter-agency mechanism for follow-up on water-related decisions reached at the World Summit for Sustainable Development and water-related Millennium Development Goals -- should be mandated to report regularly on progress on water resource development and management, including on strategies for integrated water resources management.  The representative of Egypt added that introducing new mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation would only make things more complicated and make the process more difficult for developing countries.

The representative of Kenya said it was necessary to ask which United Nations would coordinate work on water quality and quantity monitoring.  He called for collaboration at the regional level, particularly at the river basin level.  River basin organizations needed to be involved in monitoring and data transmission.  What was lacking at the national level was capacity-building, including in the areas of equipment, resuscitating information networks and data management.

He also stressed the need to elaborate a set of common indicators, a point that was picked up and supported by a representative of non-governmental organizations, who said that sanitation in schools was one such indicator that was vitally necessary.  The availability of water, as well as its equitable distribution, must be monitored, he added.  Monitoring also needed to be regular so as to institute a sense of urgency.  It was important that governments publish the data that they collected, which would promote participation in planning and hold governments to account.

When delegations turned their attention to the issue of financing, the representative of Spain noted that cost recovery, in terms of operation and maintenance, was an essential aspect in most financing options for leveraging domestic resources.  There were in all countries possibilities for subvention as part of the tariff systems.

Speaking on behalf of the European Union, Luxembourg’s representative said that financing strategies for water should be elaborated within national action plans for achieving the Millennium Goals.  The implementation of the Monterrey Consensus was crucial for increasing effective financing.  The effectiveness of aid through existing mechanisms and simplification of the granting of aid, among other things, should be considered.

Providing an example of new strategies for financing water and sanitation, the representative of the European Commission described the European Union Water Initiative, which aimed to increase the priority given to water and sanitation by developing countries, and improve efficiency of European Union assistance.  In addition to the Initiative, there was also the European Union Water Facility for African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, which aimed to create conditions for attracting funds, other than official development assistance (ODA), for water and sanitation. The amount requested so far from countries was some 2.5 billion euros, which suggested that there were projects ready and waiting to be catalysed.  The Water Facility, representing a shift in project funding, provided a complementary mechanism to the traditional use of ODA.

The representative of Mauritius emphasized the importance of ODA flows to developing countries, particularly small island developing States, so that they could meet their water challenges.  The grant financing element was also very important, without which the cost of water might be very high, making it inaccessible to the poorest of the poor.  In many small islands, the availability of water was not so much a problem as was its storage and distribution, which cost a lot of money.  Applying the cost recovery principle in developing countries would result in rising production and living costs, which was detrimental to developing countries, particularly small islands.  The scarce availability of water in those countries was also affected by poor treatment, an area in which a lot of investment was required.

Most African countries, noted the representative of South Africa, had become heavily indebted over the past four decades and would not be able to meet the targets contained in the Millennium Goals or the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation without some form of debt relief.  For Africa to achieve those targets, more funding was urgently needed.  Funding to Africa should, among other things:  be easily accessible; be based on the principle of learning by doing; be accessible for the poor; be provided to the budget of African governments to empower them to deliver services; and not be a prerequisite for new mechanisms, as existing mechanisms were in place, such as the African Water Facility.

Several speakers supported public/private partnerships, which they felt held promise for improving the performance of water and sanitation service providers.  The representative of the United States, for example, felt that a greater role for the private sector would be crucial for meeting many of the internationally agreed targets.  Revolving funds, he added, would also be a sound policy option.

The representative of workers and trade unions felt there was a need to look at the impact of “off-book accounting”, long-term concessions, the risks to municipalities of new sub-sovereign lending mechanisms, and the lack of financial support for developing human resources.  He noted that, although it was widely agreed that donors, international financial institutions and national development agencies should not make privatization a condition for loans, that was not always the case in practice.

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