May 9. 2011 | Granada, Spain
A main objective of the proposed workshop is to analyse water pricing and cost recovery, and the roles of the public and the private sectors in urban water provisioning in an objective, critical, undogmatic and dispassionate manner. If there are other policy instruments which could be found that could make urban water use efficient, equitable and environmentally desirable, these should be considered equally with pricing as a tool for sustainable water management. It would also be noted that financial and economic views on pricing have different objectives. The financial views on pricing are in the context of cost recovery only whereas economic views on pricing are in terms of changing the behaviour of the consumers, including their appreciation of the issue of the scarcity value of water. The workshop will discuss the above issues as well as achievement of cost recovery targets. It would be further assumed that pricing is not a single option, but it includes a range of options. For example, marginal cost pricing is of course one important option, but there are many other options, including provision of initial allotment of water for everyone, with very targeted subsidies only for the poor, or to provide water on the basis of least environmental impacts. These issues will be comprehensively examined during the Workshop on the basis of the experiences from different parts of the world.