Thematic Group

While there is some agreement within the sector that consumers have to pay for water, methods and tools for ensuring access to improved services by the poor remain highly debatable and many knowledge gaps remain to be properly addressed. Tackling these problems and translating validated principles and procedures into guidelines and capacity development tools need an urgent and concerted effort.

To address these gaps, a Thematic Group on Financing and Cost Recovery has been set-up, during a one-day meeting entitled “Water is Affordable: Taking into Account the Poorest and Systems Sustainability". This meeting took place on 19 June 2003 in Delft, the Netherlands, organised by IRC. Its goal was to advocate for, and to support the development of improved policy and practice in tailoring of cost recovery frameworks to the special needs of the poorest.

Since that meeting, documentation activities have been initiated with some partners and limited funding has been channelled for research on the theme of financing mechanisms at local level.

Roughly one year later, it was time to open up the group to other interested organisations, share ideas and discuss possible future activities of the thematic group. For this reason, a second Thematic Group meeting was organised by CREPA and IRC on 28 October 2004, in Vientiane, Laos (during the 30th WEDC conference).

Minutes of these meetings can be found below.