Browsing by Author "Rees, Judith A."

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Integrated Water Resources Management
(2000) Agarwal, Anil; de los Angeles, Marian S.; Bhatia, Ramesh; Chéret, Ivan; Davila-Poblete, Sonia; Falkenmark, Malin; Gonzalez-Villarreal, Fernando; Jønch-Clausen, Torkil; Aït Kadi, Mohammed; Kindler, Janusz; Rees, Judith A.; Roberts, Paul; Rogers, Peter; Solanes, Miguel; Wright, Albert
"The paper has been divided into two main parts. The first part puts forward a strong case for applying IWRM globally and defines the IWRM concept and process. The second part provides additional advice and guidance on how IWRM could be implemented in different conditions. Readers with limited time may decide to concentrate on the first part and use the second part for reference when needed. The paper is structured in such a way that an executive summary is not required. However, as a separate publication providing a short and popular summary the folder 'IWRM at a glance' is available."
Regulation and Private Participation in the Water and Sanitation Sector
(1997) Rees, Judith A.
"Private sector participation is widely perceived to be the solution to the failure of many publicly owned and managed water utilities to operate efficiently and make the investments required to meet community needs. However, there are no guarantees that privatisation will actually yield the desired performance improvements. Simply converting a public sector monopoly into a private one provides no competitive incentives for the utility to operate efficiently, make appropriate investments or respond to consumer demands. Likewise, privatisation per se need do little to improve sector performance if governments are unwilling or unable to tackle such underlying problems as overmanning, uneconomic water pricing policies, financing the provision of public and merit goods, and restricting over-intrusive political intervention. Given the characteristics of the water and sanitation sector it is inevitable that some form of continued public regulation of the private companies will be necessary. The regulatory burden can be reduced by adopting a competitive form of privatisation, choosing a more competitive sector structure and devising an appropriate regulatory regime. However, it has to be recognised that there will be a trade-off between making a venture attractive to private firms and introducing a notionally ‘ideal’ regulatory system. Regulation in practice is as much about creating the conditions under which private firms can operate effectively and efficiently as it is about protecting specific customer and public interests."
Risk and Integrated Water Management
(2002) Rees, Judith A.
"Managing risks has long played a role in the development of the water sector. Such risks can be divided into two broad groups: resource groups that include natural or human induced hazards which water managers seek to regulate, and the enterprise risks faced by any water management enterprise in the execution of its functions. Although risk management must be based on good physical science and technology, they alone cannot be the main basis for decision making. A more holistic approach, embracing the Dublin principles, is needed. It is evident that water related risks are currently handled by sectoral and highly segmented management systems which leads to major inefficiencies and inequities in the allocation of risk, risk mitigation costs, and security benefits. There is a need to recognise that risk is not a physical phenomenon but a cultural one and that risk mitigation is an economic and social good. Risk management is a distributive issue, involving complex trade-offs and the re-allocation of real welfare between different economic, social and interest groups. Designing institutions capable of taking a more holistic and public preference based approach to water related risks will never be easy and certainly there is no design recipe that is readily available and applicable for use everywhere. However, one potentially useful approach is to consider what risk management tools, strategies and organisational arrangements would be most appropriate from an economic efficiency perspective. From such a perspective governments would want to employ the least intrusive, costly and extensive means of risk regulation that is possible in each case. Study of the economic characteristics of hazards and related risks can help identify areas where individuals, communities or stakeholder groups are best placed to make risk-safety trade-off decisions and can inform decisions about the appropriate spatial scale of regulatory organisations. It is not claimed that economic efficiency should be the sole basis for risk management decision making. However, it is argued that the conventional approach to institutional design based on the physical nature of the hazard and the technological means of regulating that hazard is not sustainable, effective or welfare maximising. There is a need for a new approach based on a clear understanding of the economic characteristics of the risks, or public preferences and of societies' willingness and capacity to adopt different risk management strategies."
Urban Water and Sanitation Services: An IWRM Approach
(2006) Rees, Judith A.
"The rapid pace and scale of urbanization represents a considerable challenge for water resources management, the delivery of essential water and sanitation services and environmental protection. To help meet these challenges there is a need to adopt an integrated water resources management (IWRM) approach which explicitly recognises the complex sets of interdependency relationships which exist within and between human and environmental systems. This need arises because of the negative externalities created by the uncoordinated use of water and land resources and by the uncoordinated provision of interdependent basic services; the opportunity costs of employing scarce water, land and capital for low value purposes; and the cost savings which can occur by widening the range of provision or management options. An IWRM approach when applied in an urban context cannot simply consider matters within the built up area itself. It must recognise intersectoral competition for resources (physical, social and financial), the role of the urban sector in meeting national developmental priorities, and negative impacts of urban provision practices on other parts of the economy. IWRM does not imply the creation a vast bureaucracy attempting to coordinate everything, rather it involves the creation of an institutional framework within which water relevant roles and functions are performed at an appropriate spatial scale and which helps ensure that decision makers have incentives to take the social costs of their actions into account. There is evidence to suggest that in some countries decentralised urban water services have the advantages of allowing more demand responsive provision, greater accountability, and technical flexibility without significant losses of economies of scale and scope. However, such decentralized systems have to operate within a strong strategic and regulatory framework. Moreover, institutions to promote coordination and cooperation between sectoral actors and across jurisdictional boundaries will need to be put in place. In developing the strategic framework within which different sectoral and spatial actors operate it is important to consider the policy tools available at different levels of government and governance. Furthermore an instrument (or policy mix) will need to be developed, not only to meet different policy goals, but also to ensure that local or sectoral actors do not operate in narrowly self interested ways. There are relatively few urban management tools which are automatically compatible with the efficiency, equity and environmental sustainability objectives of IWRM. Implementation practice is crucial."
Water Financing and Governance
(2008) Rees, Judith A.; Winpenny, James; Wall, Alan W.
"Traditionally, within the water sector, financing issues have not had a high profile and are mostly related to supply side investments. This is no longer sufficient as population growth, urbanisation, greater wellbeing and a higher quality of life puts the world’s fragile water resources under increasing stress. With the added threat from climate change the situation is set to deteriorate even more. Supply side issues and the financial architecture for providing essential domestic services was addressed by the Camdessus Report in 2003 and the issue of demand management was covered by the Gurria report in 2006. These two landmark papers have prompted a wealth of interest in water financing. However, this has mainly focused on service provision and there is very little that covers the issues of financing for the overarching water resource management and governance systems that are critical for all users and for environmental protection. Many commentators have stressed that financial needs will not be met without major reforms in water governance. By improving water governance the enabling environment for investment will improve as risks, commercial and political, will be better understood and addressed. Over the last fifteen years an integrated approach to water resources management (IWRM) has evolved as the means to manage water more holistically and sustainably, and overcome the fragmented decision making and purely supply side approach common to the past uses and abuses of water resources. There is a very close link between the integrated approach, good water governance and financing but, to date, there has been little discussion about this relationship. This paper aims to bring together these different strands so that a more coordinated, coherent approach to water financing is adopted. It focuses on the need to fund the water resources functions that are essential for security and sustainability and to examine the relationship between the different governance and organisational structures in the sector and their ability to secure funding for essential goods and services."