BPD is a world-wide network of partners involving government, business, civil society and donors.

BPD Water and Sanitation

BPD’s goal is to enhance and increase water and sanitation provision in poor communities by strengthening partnerships.

Challenges around water and sanitation service delivery in developing countries are not merely rooted in gaps in technology or finance. BPD promotes more efficient and effective relationships between stakeholders across the public, private and civil society sectors.

Active since 1998, Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation (BPD) is the sector leader in providing non-profit, neutral and independent guidance on effective relationships that both challenges and supports water and sanitation policymakers and practitioners. BPD generates learning through the following activities:  

 

VIP Evacuation South Africa

Action Research
with policymakers and practitioners on the ground, to generate quick insights into how different institutional relationships can be most innovative and effective in serving poor communities

Direct Support
to water and sanitation organisations and partnerships, to build stronger relationships, through the application of our tried and tested tools and frameworks

Learning Events and Activities
for organisations across the water and sanitation sector, to promote dialogue around institutional relationships.

Find out more about BPD

 

 

BPD Occasional Paper Now Published: The Right to Water - Respect, Protect and Fulfil

Since the 2010 UN resolution on the Right to Water and Sanitation, BPD has been asking how it will impact on the roles, responsibilities and relationships between different stakeholders for the effective delivery of water services in poor communities. With the generous support of its interns, over the last 18 months BPD has drafted a document highlighting the potential of the Right as a catalyst for greater cooperation in the water sector. We welcome your thoughts and comments on this emerging area of analysis.

Download The Right to Water - Respect, Protect and Fulfil

New Document Library

We are pleased to announce the relaunch of our Document Library, which contains over 150 BPD publications on a range of topics related to water and sanitation partnerships.

Go to the document Library

 

Current Programmes

Global partnership strategic review

BPD is currently conducting a strategic review of a large water and sanitation alliance operating in 27 developing countries. The review is looking at what can be learned regarding process and impact in the individual countries and across the projects and alliance as a whole.

Stakeholder analysis and learning agenda review 

BPD is also working with WSUP to extract learning around key themes in water and sanitation delivery, supported by USAID-funded African Cities for the Future Program. The themes are land tenure, hybrid management models, community engagement and contracting of small-scale entrepreneurs. This follows a stakeholder analysis and learning agenda review that we conducted for WSUP in 2010-11, which are detailed in our annual report.

Annual Report - What We Learned in 2010-11

In 2010-11, relative to our size, BPD's behind the scenes role of mediating and “hand-holding” continued to make a substantial, but perhaps not easily quantifiable contribution to the water and sanitation sector.  We continue to see our largest contribution as that of unpacking assumptions, providing food for thought and giving policymakers and practitioners ideas to play with and new ways of looking at what they are doing to advance service delivery. 

Among other topics, the report covers informal influences on relationships, small town service delivery, the legacy of public-private partnerships and the impact of culture on relationships: 

Download the full annual report

BPD Guideline Series on PPPs

BPD has published six documents in a series providing guidelines on improving governance in partnerships for water service delivery in developing countries. Based on two PPP publications by Swiss Government agencies SDC and SECO - Policy Principles and Implementation Guidelines, these practitioner notes provide guidance for all kinds of partnerships in the water and sanitation sectors. Please see 'Latest Publications' on the right-hand side of this page.

Emerging PPP Trends Publication

More on the themes and related tools

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