Global public goods and Millennium Development Goals

In the field of the governance of global public goods, the provision of basic services (water, sanitation, waste, etc.) is now the subject of a collective international commitment, especially since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals and the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. While two billion extra people are expected to move to urban areas in the next 20 years, the issue of global financing for infrastructure in a context of rapid urbanisation, and especially that of access to basic urban services, is rightly raising questions facing the international community.

The means of financing these services, and especially of sharing costs, remain the subject – even in developed countries – of intense debate in a field whose effective operations, especially in developing countries, are paradoxically poorly understood. The IDDRI Foundation has thus chosen to launch a research project on financing urban drinking water and sanitation services in developing countries, with the aim of analysing the methods for sharing the longterm global costs between actors (mainly consumers and taxpayers) and the socio-political dynamics at the origin of these compromises. Different research teams are being mobilised under the coordination of the IRD (French Research Institute for Development).