|
Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests:
Good morning and thank you for participating in today’s Water Policy Dialogue, hosted by the Institute of Water Policy. I would like to express special appreciation to Dr. Asit Biswas who is a world renowned expert in water and more importantly a friend of the Asian Development Bank, for making this dialogue possible. I also would like to thank LKY SPP/Dean Kishore Mabubani, and our friend Dr. Seetharam for supporting ADB's work here in Singapore. The Institute serves as a regional knowledge hub on water governance.
"Governance" is a very difficult subject, but it is an important concept which is relevant to all developmental work we undertake. Poor governance holds back and distorts the process of development, and has a disproportionate impact on the poorer and weaker sections of society. Assisting developing countries in improving governance is therefore a strategic priority of ADB in its work to eliminate poverty in Asia and the Pacific. Good governance is one of the drivers of ADB’s Long Terms Strategic Framework Vision 2020.
Good governance has four key interrelated elements that are considered necessary to sustain efforts and ensure results. These include accountability, participation, predictability, and transparency. I would like to add one more key element: ownership by the stakeholders.
Due to the cross cutting nature of the water sector, governance is particularly important to our work operation. Many questions arise as a result. This term—“water governance”—needs to be better understood. Water governance is like the operating system software of a sophisticated computer system. It is the very environment that either enables or constrains what financing and infrastructure are attempting to accomplish. It is therefore bigger than financing or infrastructure. Without this software - good water governance- there is a gap between intended and actual results.
When we look at ADB policies and the capacity building initiatives ADB supports in its developing member countries, we find four common traits or features of governance.
First, we must have institutions that cut across different agencies dealing with water but must have multi-stakeholder linkages to guard against major gaps or overlaps in policy, planning and funding.
The second feature of water governance is the set of policies, laws and regulations that literally govern the sector. Reforms too are required. ADB’s own water policy, which took several years to craft, recognizes water as both an economic and social good, that must be governed accordingly.
The third feature of water governance is management and budgetary practices to deliver services. Creativity and flexibility are necessary to design tariff structures that will balance affordability and sustainability.
And lastly, strong reporting and monitoring would involve a citizen’s report card or customer service units or annual corporate reports, even by public utilities. These measures increase transparency and accountability, and they should be seen as an opportunity to improve both your services and your credibility.
There are several good examples of "good governance" at work. Not too long ago, I was involved in a major infrastructure project called Nam Theun 2. Many of you may have heard of it. It is a 1,000-plus megawatt hydropower project in Laos and it will be completed this year. In many ways, it has been a groundbreaking project, and the media and civil society have paid careful attention to it. The main objective of the project is not to build the large infrastructure, but it was to provide badly needed revenues for the Government of Lao PDR to help them implement their national poverty reduction strategy. In the final stages of preparation, the major concern was how revenues from the sale of the electricity to Thailand will be used through proper management, monitoring, and reporting. Stakeholders wanted to ensure that revenues will directly benefit the people of Laos. To facilitate this, the project has held regular consultations to inform and discuss with these concerned groups the processes and mechanisms that will be used for monitoring and reporting. More importantly, we developed a comprehensive public expenditure management strengthening program which put the Lao government in the driver's seat in improving the monitoring and transparency of the use of project revenues – using their own budgetary systerm. In this way, all stakeholders play an important role in strengthening water governance. This project touched upon all 5 "traits" of ADB's good governance work, i.e. institution building; setting up appropriate policies, regulations and laws; addressing budgeting; proper reporting/monitoring, and building strong ownership by the government and people of Lao PDR.
Former ADB President, the late Tadao Chino – who led ADB's large delegation to the World Water Forum in Kyoto in 2003, said quite memorably that “the water crisis in the Asia region is essentially a crisis of governance.” This should lead us to question why governance is weak, so that we can resolve how to strengthen it. And this is an important, but often an under-appreciated process in development. It’s always easier to identify possible solutions than to identify the real problems.
People think that the solution for the lack of infrastructure is to build infrastructure. Pipes are missing, power lines are missing, wastewater treatment plants are missing—so we build them. By simply building them, do we solve our development problems? Not if they sit there in disrepair because the proper management and planning wasn’t in place to sustain their operation. Therefore our development issues must be addressed systematically, with the focus on results.
Do we want to see more wastewater treatment plants, or do we want to see increased water reuse and higher standard of effluents that safeguard our water resources from unnecessary pollution? Most often, when we focus on the infrastructure that is missing, we miss the mark. The real mark is to deliver acceptable services by keeping the infrastructure functioning thus benefiting the people. And that requires good governance.
In conclusion, let me say that the development community recognizes the need for greater people-centered, results-oriented development. This means developing our own capacity as we do the same with our clients. We all must better understand the technical and human sides of turning policy into practice, or awareness into action. We must understand and prioritize governance
We have already begun taking these steps. In September 2008, ADB and the Institute of Water Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy agreed to:
ADB has also since commissioned a second edition of the report, Asian Water Development Outlook in the run up to the 2010 Asia Pacific Water Summit. The focus of this summit is water security. Of course, without good water governance, there cannot be water security.
Thank you very much, and I look forward to the discussions ahead.