Public Banks and Public Water in the Global South: Financing Options for Sustainable Development

This volume presents the first systematic review of public bank lending in the water sector in the Global South.

Many public banks have an explicit mandate to finance public water management yet, despite a resurgence of interest in public banks and the role they can play in sustainable development, their role in funding water management has been largely ignored. Drawing on case studies from Asia, Africa and Latin America, this book measures the scale and nature of interaction between public banks and public water operators for the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation. It identifies challenges and opportunities for deeper engagement between public banks and public water operators in the Global South and highlights promising practices, showcasing how these might be transferred to different regions and different sectors. Each case study is based on in-depth interviews with public banks that have funded public water operators, and public water operators that have borrowed from public banks, including Banco Popular in Costa Rica, the Development Bank of the Philippines, the National Bank for Agricultural and Rural Development in India and the TIB Development Bank in Tanzania. Overall, this book provides a critical analysis of the potential of public banks to address global water security issues.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of water resource management, water and health, sanitation and sustainable development. It will also be of interest to professionals and policymakers working with public and development banks in the supply of safe water and sanitation for all.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Thomas Marois is a Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Public Banking Project at McMaster University, Canada. Thomas holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Public Banking. He is an Associate Director of the Municipal Services Project.

David A McDonald is Professor of Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada, and Founder and Director of the Municipal Services Project.

Susan Spronk is Associate Professor in the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is an Associate Director of the Municipal Services Project and a co-founder of the Blended Finance Project which explores pro-public alternatives in Canada’s foreign aid program. She is also an active trade unionist in the academic labour sector in Canada.