Development Aspects Impressum Editors

Introduction

Over the past 30 years, the drinking water supply and sanitation sector in Latin America and the Caribbean has undergone successive reforms designed to improve its performance (an exhaustive analysis of these reforms is available in Jouravlev, 2004). Most of the countries, however, are far from achieving universal coverage and much remains to be done to provide appropriate levels of service quality. At the same time, there are still problems for the financing of operations and invest- ment in services.

As for the depth of reforms in the region, the most noteworthy have been in Argentina and Chile. Their respective transformation processes have made consid- erable progress in both the implementation and improvement of new regulatory frameworks and the self-financing of services and private sector participation. De- velopment and results have differed, however.
In the 1970s, services in urban areas in Chile and in the Buenos Aires Metropol- itan Area in Argentina showed similar levels of coverage. At present, urban areas in Chile have practically achieved universal drinking water supply (99.8 per cent) and sewerage services (95.9 per cent) and 86.9 per cent of wastewater is treated, but coverage in Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area stands at only 79 per cent, 59 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively.
The Natural Resources and Infrastructure Division of the United Nations Eco- nomic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has published a study entitled Servicios de agua potable y saneamiento: lecciones de experiencias relevantes (Drinking Water and Sanitation Services: Lessons from Relevant Experi- ence) (Project Document Series, LC/W.392, April 2011) by Emilio Lentini.²
On the basis of comparative analysis of the two experiences from Chile and Argentina (a detailed analysis of the experience of Chile is available in Valenzuela and Jouravlev, 2007 (see Annex 1), and that of Argentina in Ordoqui Urcelay, 2007 (see Annex 2)) and taking into account references from other countries in the re- gion (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, México, Peru, Uruguay, etc.), the author identifies the factors exogenous and endogenous to the drinking water supply and sanitation sector which determine performance or, in other words, success or failure.

2 This study (available in Spanish only) was undertaken within the framework of the Sustainability and Equal Opportunity in Globalization. Component 1, Theme 4: Building Commitment, Efficiency and Eq- uity for Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation in Latin America and the Caribbean project undertaken jointly by ECLAC and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation (BMZ). The objective of this project was to strengthen the capacity of the governments of the region’s countries to design and implement effective public policies with an emphasis on commitment, efficiency, equity and sustain- ability. The experience accumulated from developing public policy formulation-oriented research and technical assistance activities in its context is summarized – in the form of public policy guidelines for the drinking water supply and sanitation sector – in Hantke-Domas and Jouravlev, 2011.

2.