Preface

The complexity and the enormity of the water problems the world is likely to face in the coming years are likely to be enormous. Thus, it is essential that new ideas and concepts should be considered to improve water management practices. In this context, two aspects of water management that have received very high attention during the past five years are water pricing and public-private partnership. These two issues, to a certain extent, are interlinked. Unquestionably, they were two of the most controversial issues of the Second World Water Forum in The Hague, in 2000, and the Third World Water Forum in Japan in 2003. Passion reigned high from both the proponents and opponents of these two concepts during these two Forums. The report of the World Commission on Water, whose report formed the backbone of The Hague Forum stated categorically that “Commission members agreed that the single most immediate and important measure that we can recommend is that systematic adoption of full-cost pricing for the water services”. The report then went on to say that “without full-cost pricing the present vicious circle of waste, inefficiency, and lack of services for the poor will continue. There will be little investment from the private sector, services will be of poor quality and rationed, and there will be little left for investing in water quality and other environmental improvement.” Both at the Hague and the Japan Forums, many social activists and NGOs argued that water is a basic human right, water pricing will ensure poor will be deprived of water for which they will not be able to pay, and private sector must not profit from the provision of water services. The discussions on these issues at the two Forums were mostly simplistic, dogmatic and ideological. Unfortunately, there was no real dialogue between the proponents and opponents of the two concepts, and there was not enough objective and dispassionate discussions of the benefits and costs of following or not following these two paths. No rational or definitive conclusions could be drawn from the discussion at these two Forums, part of which stems from the fact that these events were not structured properly to facilitate objective dialogues on any issue. It is also often not realised that financial and economic views on pricing have different objectives. The financial view on pricing is in the context of cost recovery only, wherea