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Cross-Cutting Problem Areas for Public-Private Collaborations in Urban Environmental Services
For all environmental services:
- Rapid pace of change. In problems, populations,
technologies. Requires effective, decentralized information services.
Offers opportunities for leapfrogging to less resource intensive
services.
- Political risks. Facing private involvement
with governments, such as the pressure of election cycles, potential
instability of new democracies, personal agendas of government
officials, and the special status of some services (particularly access
to water). Creates barriers to starting or maintaining collaborations.
- Pricing. Of environmental services. Not only is
there insufficient information on life-cycle costs, the information that
does exist is rarely incorporated into pricing structures. Subsidies and
the political acceptability of higher prices are particular issues.
- Delivering services to the door. Particularly
of the poor.
- Disparities in bargaining power. Undermine the ability to build effective, durable collaborations. Special issues exist between: (a) municipal governments and local service providers and (b) multinational service providers (particularly those promising significant private investment) and government officials.
For capital intensive services or monopoly providers:
- Short time horizons. Lead to unrealistic
expectations or unsustainable solutions. Major institutional change
(such as building regulatory capacity) and major private investments -
both take time. Both are difficult to fit political cycles and the
desire for immediate improvements in crisis conditions.
- Accessing operating experience and capital. Can
obscure local capacities and limit the universe of potential service
providers. Tremendous local operating experience already exists in many
countries. Frequently, however, a handful of international service
providers are seen as the only vehicle for bringing private capital to
bear - and they are awarded the major contracts. Methods need to be
found for decoupling operating experience and access to private capital,
while building on local capabilities.
- Preparing governments for their new roles. Many governments are ill-prepared to be partners with private organisations, sophisticated consumers of what private firms can - and cannot - offer, or credible regulators of private activities. Ensuring that they can be effective partners in collaborations meeting basic social needs, as well as the individual goals of the other parties, is a key challenge.
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