Tell us about GTZ.

GTZ is a service company working worldwide in the field of development cooperation. It works on behalf of the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. This Ministry is one of the two Ministries which are the Convenors of the Freshwater Conference. The other Ministry is the Environment Ministry.

We offer technical and smaller financial services as well as policy advise to developing countries in areas such as health, education, policy reform and legal reform. The German Ministry decides what kind of development cooperation policy we as a German Government want to see implemented. GTZ implements it.

We offer interdisciplinary experience and information about processes of change in developing and transition countries.

GTZ is organized as a private sector company and is owned by the German Federation. The company has over 10,000 employees working worldwide in over 120 countries. Some 8,000 of them are locally-contracted nationals. Around 1,100 employees work at the GTZ Head Office in Eschborn near Frankfurt/Main. The Head Office has four regional departments which consolidate knowledge about the individual countries: Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America and Mediterranean Region, Europe, Central Asian Countries.

Tell us about the kind of development cooperation activities that the German Federal Government undertakes.

The development cooperation activities of the German Federal Government take various forms. Besides Technical Cooperation, which the GTZ is primarily responsible for, there are Financial Cooperation and Personnel Cooperation, which the German Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (KfW), the German churches and political foundations and other political sponsors in developing and transition countries are active in. In addition, Germany makes major contributions to international organizations promoting development cooperation, for example the World Bank and the European Union. In this case, we speak of multilateral cooperation.

Technical Cooperation is also embedded in GTZ's name. The goal of Technical Cooperation is to enhance the capabilities of the people, organizations and institutional structures in the partner countries. Technical Cooperation means transferring knowledge and skills and mobilizing and improving the conditions for their use. Technical Cooperation strengthens the individual initiative of the people so that they can improve their living conditions through their own efforts.

How did your group come up with the key themes of the conference?

The themes are essentially based on the international discussion on water issues. An organizing committee which consists of the two ministries and the foreign affairs ministry, Secretariat and GTZ have been meeting regularly for the last one-and-a-half years to distil it into the key themes.

What are some of the most controversial issues in water resource management today?

I think the whole financing issue is a huge issue at the moment. We all know that we need to have a lot more investment in this sector. If you want to not only bring water to the people but bring a satisfactory quality of water, we need to attract a lot of money to the sector. And if you compare it with other infrastructure sectors like telecommunications and energy, there is much more investment there.

The water process is very slow. You need a long range infrastructure that will be built for the next 20-30 years. If you compare it to oil, a long range infrastructure is needed but the difference is that there are more revenues to be made. With water, you always have in the end a single consumer and it depends on their ability to pay.

So if I am a private company investing in a developing country and I end building pipelines to all the poor areas of town, but people in the end are not able to pay, then that leaves the company massive losses.

Another risk is political risk in these countries. Change in these countries is quite frequent. There might be an economic downfall and again people will not be able to pay. So there is a huge investment in water sector accompanied by costly maintenance. The question is how to make it attractive for investment while serving the poor. There are possibilities but it remains a controversial issue.

Are there any examples of private sector success stories?

There are a number of success stories. We will have a presentation by Thames Water of England. And he will show us one success story from Chile. Manila and Buenos Aires has also been very successful. I think the most important part is that you need to have reliable regulation body that regulates the private company operating the system.

What are some of the possible models of water service delivery in developing countries?

Water cannot be privatized but water service delivery can be privatized. Another model is if the government runs water service efficiently then there is no need for it to be privatized. Or you privatize just a few parts of it. There is no one solution. One has to develop tailor made solutions for each nation and even within each city.

How is the model for water delivery different for rural and urban slum areas?

In slums there is a lot of density of population and the pipeline can reach a lot of people. If the people have a capacity to pay, then the investment pays off. In rural areas, populations are scattered. System that one operates there depends on the number of people living in any particular village.

In Indonesia for example, few different islands that are planned to be supported by GTZ and KFW. Some areas are very hilly and population is very scattered. So to build a pipeline there would be far too expensive. There you have to build cisterns where you collect water, or rainwater harvesting or deliver tanks and they can store it in underground storage.