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Convenient access to safe water is central to human health and development. Water-borne disease remains a major cause of mortality and morbidity in the world, much of which could be eliminated by a combination of better water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH). The WHO estimates that around 502 000 deaths a year in low and middle income countries from diarrheal disease are attributable to unsafe water, and that over 1 000 children under 5 die each day from diarrheal disease caused by inadequate WASH. UNWomen estimates that in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, women and girls spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water, the time valued at around $20 billion a year. Sustainable development goal no. 6 ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ creates a framework for tackling the challenge of mobilizing the large investments required and making WaSH available at affordable prices. The purpose of the study on which this report is based is to analyze, capture and synthesize lessons learned from closed GPOBA water projects in order to evaluate the impact of the subsidy schemes and inform the scale-up and replication of OBA approaches. These lessons offer insight to successes and failures of project design and implementation as well as solutions to more complex projects and/or less tested environments.

This note explores the Bangladesh experience in implementing the widespread use of a private operator model for building and operating rural piped water schemes. Since the early 1990s, the World Bank has, through a series of development projects, designed, piloted, and attempted to scale up use of the model as a mechanisms to address the very real issues of arsenic contamination and delivery at scale. The latest of these projects is still in implementation. The experience with these projects to date has been disappointing, and while a limited number of schemes are still in operation, the model has not been replicated in a large number of communities as intended and has not proved to be particularly sustainable. Over this same period, the government and other development partners also have been using alternative methods to deliver the same kinds of services in rural areas. Some of these efforts seem to have been modestly successful. However, much of the evidence about the performance of these other models is anecdotal and there has been little rigorous analysis to compare the performance of these different models with the private sponsor approach. This paper attempts to do this on the basis of a desk review of existing World Bank literature, including project documents and research reports, coupled with interviews with key stakeholders and World Bank staff. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the rationale and key issues associated with efforts to scale up a private operator model in Bangladesh. The second section reviews government efforts and those of its other development partners, to use a more traditional mode of service provision, involving community management. The third, fourth, and fifth sections review efforts by the government and the World Bank to design, test, and scale up a private operator model for service provision. A sixth section reviews some of the international research that provides insights into the use of such models in other countries and sectors. The paper ends with tentative conclusions about the experience in Bangladesh, lessons learned, and several options for further analysis.

In this issue: trends: 10 years of private-sector participation in water; interview: Mozambiques industry behind the tap; and feature: irrigating Brazils semi-arid northeast.

The involvement of the rural private sector in water supply in Cambodia is unique to the country. The presence of this private sector allows other entities to respond to new demands from people living in the larger villages for household water supply, which the State is not yet able to address. These entrepreneurs operate on a merchant basis, lacking an institutional structure which is still being created. Their business is most often based on pushcart delivering water barrels at the house of villagers or more recently on small piped networks usually distributing raw surface water. Service is rough; the water quality is uncertain, but the users are satisfied with this service, because for them, it constitutes another alternative to the already considerable choice of water supplies available-ponds, wells, boreholes, and rivers. Their demands focus more on a practical objective (a supply in the household) than on a sanitary one, even if surveys show that villagers have a good understanding of health risks associated with water. Through the implementation of 14 small scale water supply systems, the goal was to enhance a qualitative improvement of the water service in some Cambodian small towns through the transformation of rough and informal merchant services to a basic water service supplying drinking water to an extended population under a formal institutional arrangement. The MIREP (Mini Reseaux d'Eau Potable - Small Scale Piped Water Supply System) program, launched in 2001 to transform these very basic initiatives into basic services, began as a pilot project supporting one entrepreneur in the implementation of a small piped water system. In order to move forward, the MIREP program made a choice, in particular linked to its proximity to the Ministry of rural development, to assist the nascent involvement of communes in decentralization, to strengthen provincial power through the process of decentralization, and to respect the cultural heritage of those who devised and financed the project.