mei - water tariffs toolkit

Toolkit: social and political acceptability of water tariffs

The Municipal and Environmental Infrastructure team and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency have commissioned the preparation of a toolkit comprising best-practice techniques for assessing the social and political acceptability of urban water and wastewater tariffs.

These practical tools should help in assessing the risks of non-payment, social dissatisfaction and political resistance associated with increasing water and wastewater tariffs.

The toolkit should serve as a useful resource to decision-makers and practitioners for the following purposes:

• setting appropriate performance standards (levels of service) that reflect consumer preferences, and realistic timetables for increasing these standards;

• providing better information to city officials, banks and private investors about the sustainability of tariffs and the financial feasibility of projects;

• encouraging the use of transparent competitive bidding procedures and public participation in the planning of concessions as a way to increase the perceived fairness of prices and hence to reduce the risk of consumer resistance;

• providing better ways of assessing whether the criteria for grants accorded by bilateral and multilateral agencies (e.g. the EU ISPA programme) are met;

• providing information for the design of tariff structures and, if desired, targeted subsidies;

• helping the water company plan a customer information campaign to reduce misperceptions and create trust.