a. Millennium Dome given away in profit-sharing deal. December 19, 2001.

Ministers in the UK have given away the Millennium Dome in return for a share of the profits generated by a sports and property consortium, the government confirmed yesterday. Lord Falconer, minister responsible for the troubled Greenwich attraction, announced that the government would enter a 25-year public-private partnership to turn the Dome into a sports and entertainment arena surrounded by homes and offices.

However, the consortium picked by the government, Meridian Delta, has not yet handed over a penny for a 999-year lease for the Dome and the 150 acres of valuable land round it. The Dome has been given away but Meridian will pay cash for the land in stages, with the earliest installment due once planning permission is granted in about 18 months. The government will be given a share of the profits the group makes from property development and the sports arena, but not until the end of 2004.

Meridian, backed by the property developers Quintain Estates and Lend Lease, has linked up with Phil Anschutz, owner of the LA Lakers basketball team, to develop a 20,000-seat arena inside the Dome. It plans to build homes and offices on the 150 acres around the attraction.

The government hopes that if the venture is successful, Pounds 500m will be handed back to taxpayers over about 25 years. It said the private sector would invest Pounds 4bn in the Greenwich peninsula, including Pounds 200m in the Dome itself, but officials were evasive when asked if the public purse would contribute extra money.

By S. Daneshkhu and C. Newman, Financial Times (London), December 19, 2001.

Source: Source Weekly, no. 44-45, 19 Nov 2001

b. Public-Private Partnerships Are Key to Fighting Disease.

Public-private partnerships involving governments, foundations, private companies, and non-governmental organizations have proven to be valuable allies in fighting the infectious diseases and epidemics that ravage the world's poorest and most vulnerable communities. Pharmaceutical companies have been prominent in these efforts, donating medicines and other resources to fight malaria, tuberculosis, and opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. Although debate continues about the appropriate organization and scope of the fight against infectious disease, consensus prevails on one key point: drugs alone are insufficient in the absence of strengthened healthcare systems and changes in health behaviors.

The International Trachoma Initiative (ITI) was among the first public-private partnerships to link prevention with treatment in developing countries, while building the infrastructure necessary for sustained improvement in public health. Founded by Pfizer Inc and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, ITI works toward the elimination of trachoma, the world's leading cause of preventable blindness. In addition to its programming for applied research and communications, ITI supports national efforts to eliminate trachoma through implementation of the "SAFE" strategy (Surgery, Antibiotics, Facial hygiene, Environmental change) recommended by the World Health Organization.

Based on fifteen years of research supported by the Clark Foundation, the SAFE strategy addresses the medical, behavioral, and environmental requisites for eliminating trachoma. Because SAFE is a broad-ranging strategy that involves community development, health promotion, and curative medicine, it requires partnership across sectors. Yet because of its technical simplicity, trachoma control can be integrated with other community-based health and development efforts.

Established in 1998, ITI collaborates with a network of partners to implement the SAFE strategy at the community level in a number of countries where trachoma is endemic. These programs have already shown promising results. In Morocco and Tanzania, for instance, severe trachoma infection has fallen by half in children. Overall, more than 10,000 individuals have received sight-preserving surgery; 2.5 million have received treatment with the powerful antibiotic Zithromax (R) (azithromycin); and an estimated 20 million have received health education in personal and community hygiene.

ITI's early success reflects the importance of partnership among private companies, international agencies, and governmental and non- governmental organizations in deploying SAFE and making measurable progress toward eliminating trachoma. From the beginning, ITI saw the need for competency-based partnerships to address the complex nature of trachoma and the multi-disciplinary action needed to control it.

Additional information about ITI can be found at www.trachoma.org.

Source: Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., November, 2001 / December, 2001.

c. Public Private Partnership and AIDS prevention.

A new international public-private partnership will help ensure that promising candidates for a vaccine to prevent AIDS advance rapidly through human testing and that developing countries -- particularly in Africa and Asia -- have the supplies and training needed to conduct their own vaccine trials.

The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) and Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, in part with grants from US medical technology firm BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company; NYSE: BDX), have opened a laboratory to serve as a clearinghouse for coordinating the evaluation of AIDS vaccine candidates as they complete human trials at sites worldwide. The laboratory is located in London, at St Stephen's Centre, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

The laboratory is part of IAVI's work to accelerate AIDS vaccine development by pursuing varied vaccine approaches in parallel. IAVI's strategy is to compare vaccines head-to-head in early human trials, so that the best designs can be prioritized for further development and testing. Over the next few years, IAVI plans to sponsor human trials of at least 12 AIDS vaccine candidates -- two already are in trials in Kenya and the UK -- and these vaccines will be evaluated with assistance from the central London laboratory.

Key to the laboratory's mission is to provide training for developing country scientists and access to the most modern equipment. Initially, the London facility will work with IAVI-sponsored vaccine development teams now or soon to be testing AIDS vaccine candidates in Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, India and China, as well as in the US and UK.

The laboratory has been outfitted with state-of-the-art vaccine testing tools, in part by grants to IAVI from BD. BD's commitment includes both a direct contribution of US$1 million and a donation of a BD FACSCalibur(TM) Automated Cell Analysis System from BD Biosciences, a business segment of BD, valued at US$100,000. This represents the largest ever direct financial contribution from a private company to IAVI's global AIDS vaccine development program. In addition, BD Biosciences will collaborate with IAVI to help monitor immune responses to the vaccines under study.

The laboratory will facilitate collaboration among vaccine research teams by assisting them to standardize the tests used to determine whether an AIDS vaccine candidate is working in human trials.

For further information on the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), please visit www.iavi.org.

Source: IAVI Report- The Newsletter of International AIDS Vaccine Research, 13 December 2001

d. West Bengal bid to tap private funds for core, services sectors.

The West Bengal Government is firming up plans to draw up legislation that would provide guidelines and regulate "private-public partnership" in infrastructure development and allied services. The idea behind the exercise is to leverage private sector investment in new infrastructure projects as well as in the management of existing infrastructure and services, according to Mr Asok Bhattacharya, West Bengal's Minister for Municipal Affairs & Urban Development.

Addressing an international conference on "Sustainable partnerships for city development", organised here jointly by the State Government, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights and Cities Alliance, Mr Bhattacharya said the traditional pattern of urban growth centering around cities should be checked and reversed. It would be imperative for urban local bodies to join hands with local communities with a view to identifying the local needs and resources and focussing on local economic development.

The Minister urged the international donor community to extend necessary financial and other assistance to facilitate the process of urban development in this part of the world. In this context, he disclosed that Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority and DFID were carrying out preparatory work jointly on a project named Kolkata Urban Services for the Poor.

Later, addressing media representatives, the Manager of Cities Alliance - a global alliance of cities and their development partners committed to improving the living conditions of the urban poor - Mr Mark Hildebrand, said Cities Alliance became operational two years ago with a financial corpus of $ 40 million to be spent in the first three years.

The idea was to attain specific targets - at every five-year intervals - over a 20-year time-frame beginning 1999. "We are hopeful that our initiatives would have made a difference to slum-dwellers across the globe by the year 2020," he said, adding that some of the activities have already had an impact in several countries.

Mr Hildebrand informed that Cities Alliance was launched in 1999 with initial support from the World Bank, United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, the political heads of four leading global associations of local authorities and 10 Governments. The idea behind the initiative was to "expand the level of resources reaching the urban poor, by improving the coherence of effort among ongoing urban programmes and by more directly linking grant-funded urban development co-operation with investment follow-up".

In India several projects were already on even as four new proposals were being vetted by Cities Alliance. Among the projects being vetted were a municipal infrastructure financing facility project, while another project would support networks of community-based organisations for the national sanitation programme.

Source: Source: Business Line, December 13, 2001.

e. PPP News from South America.

Chile
Chile's northern Region I waterworks company Essat has made bidding rules available through December 19 for a contract to inspect and maintain underwater outlet pipes in cities Arica and Iquique for 2002-2003, Essat announced. Offers are due January 4.

Mexico
Carlos Ramirez, commissioner of the US Section of the International Boundary & Water Commission, US and Mexico (USIBWC), testified before a House subcommittee during this week's hearing about sewage treatment in the San Diego-Tijuana border region. The USIBWC currently operates the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego County, which treats sewage from Tijuana, Mexico to the advanced primary level. Ramirez expressed the USIBWC's desire to work with Congress to implement a plan to provide cleaner secondary treatment of wastewater from the plant as required by the Clean Water Act.

He informed members of the House Subcommittee on Water Resources & the Environment that the USIBWC has sought funding and initiated efforts that would allow it to negotiate with Mexico to implement the Tijuana River Valley Estuary & Beach Cleanup Act of 2000.

The act proposes that secondary treatment be provided in Mexico through a public-private partnership. He advised that the USIBWC had just been notified that an interagency consensus has been reached on the US government position for negotiations with Mexico; this clears the way for final State Department approval of negotiations. With State Department authorization anticipated in the very near future, the USIBWC expects to be able to initiate negotiations in January.

Brazil
Brazil state Sao Paulo's waterworks company signed an agreement with the state university USP to conduct research into the use of vegetable material leftover from the sewage treatment process to generate electricity, Sabesp announced. Some US $ 418,000 will be invested over two years.

Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic's potable water and sewerage agency Inapa has inaugurated two aqueducts in El Seibo province rural localities Sabana de Rodeo and Higua, which cost over US $ 180,000, Inapa director Roberto Rodriguez announced.

The solar-powered aqueducts will benefit over 1,000 residents, Rodriguez said, commenting the country's pre-investment fund and Spain's international cooperation agency helped fund the works. Another 23 solar-powered rural aqueduct systems are under construction, with some US $ 1.55mn investment, he commented.

Source: Business News Americas December 14, 2001.

f. New Partnership To Ward Off Potential Water Wars.

Global demand for drinking water has multiplied seven times during the 20th century. In an effort to prevent conflicts arising from scarce freshwater resources Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, currently president of Green Cross International and UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura have formally signed a two year cooperative agreement to pool their complementary approaches to water conservation at UNESCO headquaters in Paris. The new initiative is called "From Potential Conflict to Cooperation Potential : Water for Peace."

See also http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2002/2002L-01-08-02.html.

Home  |  About PPPUE  |  Innovative Partnership Grant  |  Global Learning Network