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- Robin Simpson, Consumers International, London, UK
The presentation described some of the different forms of consumer participation in water decision-making, ranging from formal representation (eg when concession agreements are made) to individual consumer responsibility. In the area of formal representation, the presentation noted influences such as the Water Framework Directive, and alternatives such as national representation within regulators’ offices; river basin parliaments (in France); local public hearings (in Argentina and the US); or simply a municipal committee (in Skopje, Macedonia). The presentation outlined the influence and effectiveness of campaigns at times of critical decisions, for example in Brazil; and the potential for more embedded forms of participation, such as self-build projects for network extension (eg Lima, Peru) or the right to tariff discount for labour contributions (eg Colombia). It also noted the importance of individual consumers, particularly commercial and public organisations, being responsible and paying their bills; failure undermines investment in the system and raises prices for everyone else. The presentation also discussed the potential influences of future liberalisation, eg through GATS.
- Mark Hann, Office of Water Services (OFWAT), Birmingham, UK
The presentation outlined the structure of the UK water industry, and the role of Ofwat within it. It emphasised that Ofwat’s mandate is primarily economic, with regulation on environmental issues left to other government bodies such as the Environment Agency. Nonetheless, sustainability is central to long-term economic viability, and therefore features significantly in Ofwat’s thinking.
- Michel Desmars, Fédération nationale des collectivités concédantes et régies (FNCCR), Paris, France
The presentation described the different types of management of water supply systems in France, and the prevalence of the different types. It provided an overview of the current structures, including decisions to switch structures. It was noted that of the 500 contracts coming up for renewal annually, around 20% of local councils study the possibility of reverting to public management, with around 1% actually choosing to do so. The presentation also provided a historical perspective on the legal, commercial and political context, including the 1993 “Sapin” law on competition in tendering, and the role of decentralisation of decision-making since the early 1980s.
- Arturo Gómez Martínez EMACSA (Empresa Municipal de Aguas de Cordoba)
The presentation described the role of EMACSA (the municipal water company in Cordoba), and its relationship with government structures. It outlined various features of the Cordoba water system, and described the integration of various stakeholders into its management, including consumers and trade unions.
- Emil Bojin, Consumers Protection Association (Asociatia Pentru Protecta Consumatorilor din Romania), Bucharest, Romania
The presentation outlined the history of the privatisation of water in Bucharest, with the water company Apa Nova taken over by Vivendi in 2000. The history features a series of promises not met, with considerable price rises, a failure on Vivendi’s part to invest its own funds (only a World Bank loan guaranteed by the city), and large-scale layoffs. There were also other problems of bad service, continuing large-scale leakage, and unauthorised price rises.
- Bengt Hedenstrom, CEEP, Brussels, Belgium
The presentation talked about the recent history of the Swedish water industry, in particular the lack of development (in fact, retrogression, from a low level) of the private sector. Fewer municipalities were choosing to go or remain private in the 1990s, and the public sector continued to go from strength to strength. The presentation also discussed the positive cooperation achieved between Swedish public sector companies and some of the Baltic states in particular, to develop management systems, transfer technology and experience, and to improve the environment.
- Steve Bloomfield, Unison, London, UK
The presentation discussed the Ofwat price review of the UK water sector, arguing that its tightness would lead to job losses and lower quality. It noted the rise of contractualisation, with negative impact on the industry through increasing complexity and fragmentation. It discussed the planned Water Bill, being broadly supportive, but with doubts about increased competition (for bulk commercial users) and a lack of a national provision for health and safety concerns in the industry. It also outlined some of the issues around water debt, which had increased since changes to UK legislation prevented companies from cutting off non-payers. In particular, it pointed out the importance of distinguishing between those won’t pay and those who can’t pay, in order to treat those two groups, plus paying consumers, fairly.
- “Using stakeholder analysis to analyse decision making in the water sector”, Leon M. Hermans, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
Decision making on water systems can be characterized as an interactive process in which different stakeholders exchange their views and negotiate trade-offs between their interests. A proper understanding of decision making processes therefore requires a focus on the interaction processes between stakeholders. Stakeholder analysis offers methods that are typically used for this purpose. There are different methods available for stakeholder analysis, with different theoretical backgrounds. An overview of these methods will be provided to help a more careful selection of a method to analyze specific cases. A case application will be shortly presented to sketch some of the implications of applying selected stakeholder analysis methods to analyze water management in real world cases.
- “Economics may be boring, but can it be useful in water management?”, Colin Green, Middlesex University, UK
Typically, economists first bore you to death and then destroy your economy. However, the most succinct definition of economics is that it is the application of reason to choice, and the force of economics is then the extent to which it helps us making better collective choices and to implement those choices. The presentation outlined why we have to choose, and what we may mean by ‘better choices’, including those as to means of implementing decisions. It argued forcefully that much of textbook economics is based on false premises, but that an applied economic analysis grounded in reality is a key to improving water management. The presentation applied, for example, the realisation that water metering is not costless to show that there are trade-offs between the cost of metering and the water saved thereby, and argued that in many situations metering, particularly at the level of the individual consumer, is inefficient.
- “From Technocratic to Participatory Decision Support Systems: responding to the new governance initiatives”, Ângela Guimarães Pereira* & Serafin Corral Quintana**
* European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), Varese, Italy ** University of La Laguna, Spain
The presentation examined more than 10 years of developments in decision support systems (DSS) for environmental issues (waste management, water management, land-use planning, etc.) by a research group at the Joint Research Centre. In the earlier days the group developed some computer systems, aiming at decision makers understood as experts, whose requirements were often not obvious (many times imagining them as computer and systems literate), featuring expert knowledge databases and multi-criteria engines and requiring skilled users to take care of the analysis. Those were highly technocratic systems because they would not take into account the social context in which decisions were taking place, deploying mainly scientific information. The group has evolved the concept of the DSS through the years, the latter approach viewing it as a “context” or a “platform” for helping all those involved in decision making processes to access the necessary information for a useful debate to take place. This is in line with the new styles of governance, arising from the science and governance initiative in Europe. Newer tool developments for supporting dialogues, debates and deliberations are still computer tools, carefully designed for the audience they aim at and placed into a social process instead of embedding the social process into the system.
The presentation discussed this evolution and demonstrated the group’s new principles for conceiving and designing these tools, namely the creation of a concept-tool named “TIDDD: Tools to inform debates, dialogues & deliberations”. The latter was illustrated with a recently implemented project in the field of groundwater planning, in a French river basin. This system (software, model, and information gathering) took 6 months to develop, a reduction from the first such system which had taken 14 months. The presentation also addressed issues arising from quality assurance of information.
- “Decision making on the reform of urban water services in Ukraine: case studies”, Volodymyr V. Kuznyetsov, Ukrainian Scientific Research Institute of Ecological Problems (USRIEP), Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MENR) of Ukraine, Kharkiv, Ukraine
This presentation addressed recent case studies of decision making on the reform of urban water supply and sanitation systems in Ukraine. Such cases include two World Bank-funded projects in Lviv and Odessa, as well as the EBRD-funded pre-feasibility study on 9 Ukrainian cities. In Lviv, the World Bank is proposing to introduce private sector participation (PSP) through the involvement of a Management and Operations Improvement Advisor (MOIA). The Odessa Participatory Initiative was conceived in 1995 to enhance the effectiveness of two World Bank-supported operations in the housing and water sectors, the approach being to develop institutions at the local level to support reforms in these sectors. Finally, USRIEP/MENR was involved, together with UK-based Halcrow Management Group, in the EBRD-funded pre-feasibility study on 9 Ukrainian cities. The presentation included comments on the nature of the political reality of decision-making in Ukraine, where decisions are frequently driven, often capriciously or self-interestedly, by powerful individuals.
- “Decision Models - An analytical framework for the WaterTime project”, Deryn Graham, School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Greenwich, UK
The presentation suggested a possible framework for the Watertime project, emphasising the acquisition of knowledge and the structuring of information. It suggested that the final outcome could be a computerised model, but the process advocated was not prescriptive in this respect, and involved the production of a “paper model” as mediating representation between the knowledge acquired and any computerised system. The presentation noted that different authors present methodologies with varying stages of knowledge acquisition, but that fundamentally they all involve the identification and conceptualisation of requirements and problem characteristics, formalising these into some mediating representation scheme, implementation, and final testing and validation (Graham & Barrett, 1997). Knowledge acquisition can be machine-aided or human-labour oriented. Johnson and Johnson’s methodology (1987a), enhanced by Graham (1990), proposes a three phase knowledge elicitation process based around semi-structured interviews.The first phase is to perform a broad, but shallow survey of the domain. The second phase requires that a more detailed task analysis is performed by the elicitor, focusing on areas of interest. This model is qualitatively drawn up and uses a mediating representation, Systemic Grammar Networks. These are a context free, qualitative representation, which can be used as a tool for systems design, but their use does not imply the final use of any particular knowledge engineering shell or methodology. The third phase of this approach is to validate the models drawn up from the expert with the wider expert community. The SGNs could be reproduced as decision tables (Luger, 2001). Information theory (Shannon, 1948) could then be applied to structure these decisions in relation to their information content value, leading to decision trees, but still in the form of a paper model. Either the SGNs or decision trees are amenable to computerisation, using a Decision Tree Induction Algorithm (Quinlan, 1996) - focusing solely on the decision process. Alternatively, as or a more comprehensive Knowledge-based system – attaching procedures, queries and other features inbuilt in the software, as in an expert system shell.
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