Over the last 10-15 years, there has been a heated debate about the ability of private companies to provide adequate water and sanitation services to low-income households and their neighbourhoods. There have been a few successful examples of private provision to low-income areas but it has generally not proved possible to replicate these. This paper considers how sparsely populated, low-income and largely unserved urban settlements might obtain full coverage of formal water and sanitation networks under a private concession contract, drawing on the case study of Moreno municipality in Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area. The paper describes an initiative implemented by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)-América Latina that seeks to address deficiencies in water and sanitation provision through partnership-based management, a participatory process whereby different types of actors collaborate with each other, bringing their own particular strengths. Through awareness-raising and a participatory assessment of water and sanitation provision in the municipality, a local partnership-based management unit was formed. It is hoped that this will be institutionalized into a local water authority. Given that extending conventional water and sewerage services to the many unserved settlements is unrealistic in the short term, the paper suggests that providing both water and sanitation services to the poorest areas like Moreno is likely to happen only if all the actors involved – the public sector, private company, regulator, NGOs and communities – are committed to working together towards a solution.
