A focus on improving water and sanitation systems in environments of scarcity by creating learning opportunities, such as peer knowledge exchanges, typifies a growing international trend in funded programs among development institutions and professional sector networks. In particular, the UN’s Water and Sanitation Advisory Board launched the formation of Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs) in 2006 as a high-potential approach to reduce the proportion of the world’s population unserved by water and sanitation services. A Global Water Operators’ Partnerships Alliance now supports regional WOPS in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and South East Europe, and records almost 200 WOPs at a national level throughout the globe. These partnerships establish peer-mentor groups of water and sanitation operators within and across global regions aiming to support the spread of good practices among utilities, with a special emphasis on how operators can better serve communities lacking basic services at present.
Building on Dr. Carolini’s research program on South-South Cooperation at the city level, the “Proximate Peers” project examines how effective WOPs have been in fostering learning among participant water and sanitation operators as well as in driving improvements in their services to the urban poor after the first decade of WOP experiences. Carolini’s team (including Daniel Gallagher, Isadora Cruxen, Fitse Gelaye, and Haleemah Qureshi) is currently undertaking a regionally distributed comparative analysis of WOPs in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia through six case study partnerships in Argentina, Brazil, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Malaysia, and Pakistan.