Anne Le Strat, PhD in geopolitics, has been committed to the challenges of water management for many years. As Deputy Mayor of Paris (2001 - 2014), she successfully implemented the remunicipalisation of the water supply with the creation of ‘Eau de Paris’, the largest public water company in France, of which she was CEO. She co-founded and chaired ‘Aqua Publica Europea’, the European network of public water utilities, and currently works as a senior consultant for UN-Habitat's GWOPA, among others.

At the seventh network meeting of the Utility Platform in April 2024, she reported on her experiences as part of a dialogue and gave recommendations for the future of utility partnerships.

She was pleased to see that solidarity between European water utilities is increasingly growing, which is an important prerequisite for making their voices heard in European politics. This requires strong public companies. Despite the different legal and institutional framework conditions in the respective countries, the similarities in terms of the challenges to be solved outweigh the differences.

To strengthen public companies, three things are particularly important:

1. Leadership responsibility in management along a clear vision and underpinned by a consistent strategy to give all people access to clean water and sanitary facilities and to ensure environmentally friendly disposal of wastewater - and, if necessary, to demand appropriate framework conditions in politics.
2. The involvement of civil society and citizens as part of a multi-stakeholder approach. They play a particularly important role in the implementation and acceptance of reforms. Largely as a result of civil society pressure, the human right to water and sanitation was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2010, and states are now being measured against this standard.
3. Long-term utility partnerships have been successfully proven to help utilities improve their effectiveness and efficiency in order to provide more sustainable and inclusive services. Here too, a holistic approach that not only focuses on specific technologies, but also looks at the regulatory and political framework across departments and sectors, is important in order to improve the provision of services to the entire population.

‘It is very important to focus on governance and personnel. We need to develop training partnerships. In many cases, there is a lack of qualified staff in a number of utilities. This is one of the biggest challenges we face and need to address.’                                    Anne Le Strat

The Global Water Operators' Partnerships Alliance (GWOPA) is an international network under the umbrella of UN-Habitat that was founded in 2009 to support water operators through partnerships. It is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year and has achieved a great deal in this time: over 400 partnerships from more than 70 countries are involved, improving the living conditions of over 58 million people. Utility partnerships have developed into a successful global instrument in which the German Utility Platform successfully fits in. A central element here is the ‘non-profit idea’ of mutual support. South-South partnerships have also proven to be successful, for example in slum rehabilitation and the Pro-Poor-Growth Programme in Kenya, supported by UN-Habitat. However, in order to secure long-term cooperation in the partnerships, funding is very important in addition to good governance structures. New criteria are currently being defined for GWOPA's second phase, on the basis of which new funding can be released.

Despite all the successes to date, the global challenges remain immense: 2.2 billion people have no access to safe drinking water, 3.5 billion people have no access to safe sanitation facilities and 2 billion people do not have access to the most basic hygiene services.

 
As national governments have failed in many countries, the time has now come for local public companies, institutions and governments to take a leading role. They have already shown during the coronavirus pandemic that they can play a key role in providing basic services to the population.

Anne Le Strat concluded her keynote speech at the Utility Platform's networking event with this appeal to the participants.