COP21 - Best innovative funding mechanisms to ensure access to water and sanitation in the Mediterranean.
Kelly ROBIN
Given their water stress situation, increasing anthropogenic pressures and the experienced and projected impacts of climate change, the management of water resources is crucial to the future of southern and eastern Mediterranean countries. In order to ensure access to water and sanitation for all in the Mediterranean region, IPEMED presented its solidarity-based innovative propositions on 4 December 2015, alongside the COP21.
Moderated by Frédéric Dubessy, of Econostrum, this conference gathered Jean-Louis Guigou, President of IPEMED, Philippe Douste-Blazy, UN Under-Secretary-General in charge of Innovative Finance for Development and Chairman of UNITAID, Fadi Comair, Honorary president of MENBO and General Director of Hydraulic and Electric Resources at the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water and Samira El Houat, Director of Sebou Hydraulic Basin Agency (Fez).
Relying on IPEMED’s work already published on the topic, the debates first concerned the impacts of climate change on access to water and sanitation in the Mediterranean. Indeed, with a global population of 280 million inhabitants, or nearly 4% of the world’s population, southern and eastern Mediterranean countries (SEMCs) barely gather 1% of renewable natural water global resources in average. In spite of this unfavourable situation, in 2015 SEMCs reached good results regarding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), even though these performances hide great discrepancies[1] and might be partially impaired by climate change. Jean-Louis Guigou reminded that IPCC experts consider that the Mediterranean region will be the most vulnerable zone, with temperature increases ranging between 2 and 4°C, a drop in rainfall levels that could reach 30% and a decrease of more than half of water resources for Morocco, Algeria, the Middle-East and southern Spain. Therefore, the Mediterranean, the “basin of basins”, is the region facing most climate change challenges. Yet, proximity and complementarity between the two shores are great assets.
What innovative solutions to take up these challenges?
As General Director of Hydraulic and Electric Resources at the Lebanese Ministry of Energy and Water, Fadi Comair explained that water must be managed according to demand, and insisted on opportunities linked to the mobilisation of non-conventional resources: reuse of treated wastewater, desalination, freshwater upwelling. With the flow of Syrian refugees, drinking water demand is increasing in Lebanon. Yet the country is struggling to implement such policies as the Lebanese public debt increased, reaching nearly 80 million USD. Mrs El Houat, Director of Sebou Hydraulic Basin Agency, thinks likewise. She reminded the efforts of Morocco to increase the availability of water and to enhance a more integrated management of water resources, especially in the framework of act n°10-95 on water, and the coming challenges, in a country having less than 700 m3 of water/inhabitant/year. Samira El Houat explained that the obstacles to the implementation of an integrated water resource management (IWRM) are not technical but rather financial (user contributions and State subsidies do not cover investment spendings) and are inherently linked to governance.
Considered at the Mediterranean scale, these two testimonies highlight SEMCs’ needs in terms of investments, skills reinforcement and knowledge and/or technology transfer. These needs appear through their COP21 contributions, since the implementation of adaptation measures in the water sector depends on international support. The actions planned by Jordan, for instance, would require 4 billion USD over the next ten years.
Jean-Louis Guigou, President of IPEMED, also reminded the pre-existing financial needs, estimated in a WHO study (Guy Hutton, Jamie Bartram, 2008): 7 billion USD per year would have been necessary, between 2005 and 2015, to build new infrastructures and finance the maintenance and extension of existing networks to reach the previous MDG (planning costs excluded) for eastern Mediterranean[2]. Of course these data need to be updated, but they give us an idea of the amounts to be mobilised.
How to mobilise significant resources to solve these issues with budget constraints?
For Samira El Houat, these issues are “opportunities to innovate”. Public-private partnerships can ensure essential services but according to Fadi Comair, their implementation requires regulation and political commitment.
Drawing on his experience as head of UNITAID Board of Directors, Philippe Douste-Blazy reminded the failures and successes of the solidarity tax on plane tickets. This innovative project was implemented by ten countries to finance access to medicines, diagnosis tests and crucial prevention products for people living with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in low-income countries.
Water, just like health, is a global common good that must be protected, as show the Sustainable Development Goal n°6: “Ensuring access to water and sanitation for all and ensuring a sustainable management of water resources”. In order to ensure access to water and sanitation for all in the Mediterranean, defining “durable, predictable and additional” (P. Douste-Blazy) innovative funding mechanisms is a solution to bridge part of the existing deficit and enable a better allocation of financial resources. According to Jean-Louis Guigou, even though micro-taxes must concern activities that most benefited from globalisation, the lack of an obvious connexion between the solidarity tax on plane tickets and projects funded by UNITAID can undermine the visibility of the device.
Innovative funding mechanisms (IFMs) for access to water and sanitation: a solution for the Mediterranean
The President of IPEMED presented the Institute’s propositions, developed in a report published in 2014, with the support of M. Douste-Blazy. He insisted on the potential of solidarity micro-taxes on maritime navigation in the Mediterranean.
On the one hand, a micro-tax on cruises could, given the market’s characteristics, enable to collect up to 2 billion € per year from European passengers, with a tax of €10 per night and according to the maximum transport capacity of cruise ships operating in the Mediterranean (28.71 millions of passengers-nights)[3].
Besides, given the “polluter pays” principle and the flux of maritime freight in the Mediterranean[4], a similar mechanism could be applied to merchant navigation, following the example of the works carried out by the Ocean Policy Research Foundation regarding the straits of Malacca and Singapore. Although it seems necessary to review the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) for the straits of Gibraltar and Bosporus, Jean-Louis Guigou considers that the legal framework of the Suez Canal is ideal for the implementation of a solidarity micro-tax in the short term. Indeed, taxes are already levied by the Canal Suez Authority and Egypt is willing to “retrieve its regional leadership”[5]. As an example and first approximation, a micro-tax of €100/ship could enable to collect 17 billion € a year.
In any case, the definition, levy, management and finality of these IFMs require a new regional governance: Mr Guigou insisted on the necessity to implement an integrated transversal decision and consultation body, gathering all actors and relying on the expertise of the basin’s agencies. The implementation of a Mediterranean Water Agency could be the cornerstone of this new Mediterranean cooperation model, even though Fadi Comair defended the creation of a Mediterranean Bank, capable of securing and managing funds coming from innovative funding sources. From a hydro-diplomacy point of view, a concept highlighted by the Honorary president of the MENBO in his talk[6], the definition and management of these IFMs could be a strategic issue for SEMCs.
Therefore, according to Philippe Douste-Blazy, the political significance given to these innovative propositions by “two or three heads of States” will represent a crucial step. COP22 could start it all. As representative of the Moroccan Ministry of Water, Samira El Houat encouraged these initiatives and positioned Morocco as IPEMED partner for its 2016 works. See you in Marrakesh!
[1] According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), people still die of diarrhoea. In 2012, it killed over 81,000 people in low- or middle-income countries in the eastern Mediterranean because of poor access to water, sanitation and hygiene.
[2] Including, according to the WHO, Bahrain, Cyprus, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, as well as Afghanistan, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
[3] According to the last report published by CLIA (Cruise Lines International Association) Europe on cruise industry in 2015: “in 2014, a total of 152 cruise ships were active in Mediterranean waters with a capacity of 205,656 lower berths with an average of 1,353 berths per ships. […] In 2014, North American operators deployed 49 ships with 74,321 lower berths in the Mediterranean, including some ships targeted at European markets. In comparison, European domiciled lines operated 103 vessels, which offered 131,335 lower berths [...] collectively these ships carried a potential 3.60 million passengers on 2,478 cruises, offering a total capacity of 28.71 million passengers-nights, giving an average cruise length of 7.98 nights. A further 421,000 potential passengers cruised the Atlantic Isles”.
[4] About 100,000 ships cross the strait of Gibraltar every year, 50,000 cross the strait of Bosporus and 20,000 the Suez Canal.
[5] In Egypt’s INDC, one can read: “In light of the current global trend towards the adoption of post-2015 sustainable development goals, Egypt has developed the Sustainable Development Strategy : Egypt's Vision 2030 which serves as a roadmap for the country to achieve its desired sustainable development goals during the next 15 years. This strategy promotes the optimum use of available resources, enhancement of Egypt's competitiveness and revival of its historic leading role in the region”.
[6] In this regard, see: www.riob.org/IMG/pdf/concept_note_Fr-1.pdf