Promoting Stakeholder Participation in Water Services Delivery in China

USAID, 2010

Leveraging stakeholder participation can be an effective means for strengthening water services delivery in China. While stakeholder participation is relatively new to the sector in China, participating governmental agencies, water companies, research institutes, communities and even citizens can be effective in testing and deploying new approaches, leading to the adoption of new governance and operational systems by cities and water services providers.

In Asia, USAID implements regional water and sanitation activities through the Environmental Cooperation-Asia (ECO-Asia) Water and Sanitation Program. ECO-Asia develops and implements activities that demonstrate innovative strategies for expanding and improving access to safe water and sustainable sanitation.  From 2008 to 2009, ECO-Asia implemented five activities in China related to strengthening the good governance of water and sanitation services. These projects included: 

• Stakeholder Participation in Water Sector Planning
  • Stakeholder demand surveys and focus groups to support water service expansion in Jiangsu Province;
  • Guidelines for participatory planning for water service projects in Jiangsu Province
  • Stakeholder surveys and focus groups to support sanitation decision-making in Yunnan Province; 
• Customer Feedback Systems via Twinning Partnerships
  • Customer service and customer water quality monitoring in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province; and
  • Customer water quality monitoring and service delivery in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province. 

This report summarizes and analyzes the experiences of these pilot projects, and evaluates the potential of each activity for scale-up in China.  It provides a series of conclusions and recommendations on further strengthening public participation and good governance.