The core goal of PPPUE is to increase the access of the urban poor to basic urban services by promoting collaboration between the private and public sectors. Through these innovative partnerships, PPPUE helps to address some of the most urgent urban environmental needs and to create healthy living conditions for all citizens in cities of the developing world.

In 1994, following the recommendations of the Rio Earth Summit on public-private collaboration, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) initiated the PPPUE facility. After a successful pilot phase, PPPUE established the Project Development Facility (PDF) in 1996 to support the development of joint-venture companies in cities around the world, along with a capacity building element for the analysis and dissemination of best practices and lessons learned. Building on these experiences, PPPUE launched a new phase in 1999 to support local governments and private actors in building their own skills and capacities for crafting innovative and sustainable partnerships.

Since its launching, PPPUE has expanded into a network of governments, businesses, non-governmental organisations, members of the scientific and academic community, and other developed and developing country institutions. Building on this collaboration, sustainable models of public-private cooperation are being established to address environmental problems in urban areas in developing countries.

The PPPUE facility was established to support the development of such partnerships at the local level. With a special focus on assisting small to medium-sized cities, PPPUE intervenes at a scale where some of the most severe funding and capacity gaps can occur, often as a result of decentralisation. By concentrating efforts at the local level, the PPPUE Facility complements the activities of the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF), a recently established multi-donor initiative hosted at the World Bank which supports investments of a much larger scale.

PPPUE is involved in improving in those basic services that are most relevant to improving the living conditions of the urban poor:

• Water and Sanitation
• Solid Waste Management
• Energy Services and decentralised renewable energy production
• Central municipal services (for example, municipal markets, slaughterhouses, bus terminals)

PPPUE uses a broad definition of private sector, including local, national and international businesses, as well as informal enterprises, non-governmental organiations and communities. To meet the challenge of providing basic services to all residents, all sectors of society are potential stakeholders, being investors, providers, regulators, users, or experts. A special interest of the PPPUE is to support innovative forms of partnerships in the triangle of governments, businesses and civil society.

PPPUE Innovations & Services

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