China 
Africa 
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Everything for Sale
Published in Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke, BLUE GOLD, 2017
Water privatization generally occurs in one of three forms. First, there is the complete sell-off by governments of public water delivery and treatment systems to corporations, as has happened in the United Kingdom. Second, there is the model developed in France, whereby water corporations are granted concessions or leases by governments to take over the delivery of the service and carry the cost of operating and maintaining the system, while collecting all the revenues for the water service and keeping the surplus as a profit. Third, there is a more restricted model, in which a corporation is contracted by the government to manage water services for an administrative fee, but is not able to take over the collection of revenues, let alone reap profits from surpluses. While all three forms contain the seeds of privatization, the most common one is the second model, often referred to as “public-private partnerships.”
The political economy of the right to water
Published in Farhana Sultana, Alex Loftus, The Right to Water, 2013
Where there is significant opposition to the expansion of capital in areas of daily life protected by social rights, including water and wastewater services, corporations use their disproportionate power – economic, political and social – to assert their interests. In places where public opinion is overwhelmingly at odds with corporate interests, then, the intensity of coercion and violence, if need be, is elevated. Take the 2000 uprising to water privatization in Cochabamba, Bolivia, as an example. Thousands mobilized in resistance to water austerity measures and as a result the government declared martial law which provoked violent riots between police and protesters. Only after the death of a protester and hundreds of injuries did the government call off the police and military.
Challenges in coping with water problems
Published in Amithirigala Widhanelage Jayawardena, Fluid Mechanics, Hydraulics, Hydrology and Water Resources for Civil Engineers, 2021
Amithirigala Widhanelage Jayawardena
One of the rare success stories of water privatization is ‘Manila Water’. It was a World Bank project in which IFC designed a 25-year, $2.7 billion concession in 1997, giving Manila Water part-ownership alongside other companies. The IFC claims the project is a success story because it has provided an extra 1.7 million people with clean water, reduced diarrhoea cases by 51% and offered customers significant savings − 20 times less than per-cubic-metre rates previously charged by water vendors. But others claim that Manila’s water privatization has led to continual price hikes, legal challenges, investigations, failures to provide certain districts with water, and has given the companies unfair returns for their work.
Why contracts fail: a game theoretic approach to managing urban water
Published in Urban Water Journal, 2018
Of the many options in water privatization such as management contracts, leases, divesture and Greenfield projects, the ‘French model’ of water management, under which private water utilities provide water supply and sanitation services under long-term concession contracts, has emerged as the primary choice for private sector participation in the water sector. According to the World Bank, concession contracts accounted for nearly 80% of all private sector participation (PSP) projects in urban water utilities from 1990 through 2005 (Komives 2005). The track record of such contracts however, is not unblemished. In the 1990s and 2000s, there were many PPP failures. A World Bank database on infrastructure revealed that by 2002, 75% of contracts for water privatization in Latin America and the Caribbean had gone sour, experiencing either renegotiation or cancellation (Gómez-Ibáñez, Lorrain, and Osius 2004). It is no wonder then that at a time when the public sector appears to be courting private sector funds, the operators themselves are reluctant to take on such contracts.