‘You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours’: An examination of actor engagement in water public private partnerships Open Access

Private sector engagement in developing public infrastructure and providing public services dates back to the Roman Empire, but experienced a renaissance in the 1970s when the term public–private partnership, or PPP, was coined and popularized (Jomo et al., 2016). Initially, PPPs could be seen as a shift away from an exclusive focus on the state, reflecting neo-liberal ideas that blamed the market and government failure and inefficiency for poor economic performance. By the 1980s, in an attempt to develop infrastructure without increasing public debt, the ‘modern’ version of PPPs – where the private company is paid by the government rather than by consumers – emerged in the UK (Jomo et al., 2016). PPPs grew substantially in Latin America and Asia in the 1990s with a few international companies dominating and gradually expanding across the developing world (Jensen, 2017).

With water services in many cities around the world in disrepair through a lack of maintenance and investment, and the public sector unable or unwilling to front the cost, many have turned to the private sector to finance water infrastructure in the form of PPPs (Mandri-Perrot & Stiggers, 2013). PPPs are promoted as potential solutions for governments seeking investments needed to provide infrastructure and manage public services (World Bank, 2019). Many PPPs reflect a hybrid model that combines elements of PPPs with consulting contracts and increases the role and risks of governments and their development partners, while decreasing the role and risks of private sector actors.

Ameyaw & Chan (2016) describe the engagement of the private sector through PPPs in water services as inevitable as governments must grapple with utility inefficiencies and water infrastructure deficiencies. Although PPP activities declined in Latin America by the mid-1990s due to project failures and the Argentinean currency crisis, they have been on the rise in other parts of the world, especially Asia and the Pacific, since the early-2000s (Jomo et al., 2016; Qian et al., 2020; Lima et al., 2021). A World Bank (2022) report on PPPs reveals that geographically, the most published studies on water PPPs are in Asia, with 30 studies in China alone, followed by Europe and Africa. In France, PPPs can be seen as a response to the need to supply water to residential areas. French companies such as Veolia and Suez and Spanish companies such as Aqualia have been exporting their water model abroad in the form of PPPs, both to the developing world and to other developed countries such as the Netherlands and the United States. In 2023, international operations made up 80% of the revenue of French company Suez (Veolia, 2023b).

However, over the past decade, private sector investment has comprised only ‘1.7% of total annual spending in the water sector’ (Joseph et al., 2024, p. 3). According to the World Bank Private Participation in Infrastructure Database Annual Report that ‘records investment information for infrastructure projects in 137 low- and middle-income countries globally,’ private participation in infrastructure amounted to $86 billion in 2023, of which $1.8 billion was in the water supply and sanitation sector (World Bank, 2023, p. ii). Fifty-five percent of investments in the water sector were in Indonesia ($790 million), followed by Brazil ($287 million), China ($286 million), and Tunisia ($220.6 million) (World Bank, 2023). In spite of a trend downward in PPP investments in the past year, this still represents a growth in PPPs over the past five years in terms of investment dollars as well as an increase in the number of countries with PPP projects (World Bank, 2023).

In light of this evolution and continued growth in PPPs globally, we analyze the framing of water PPPs by key water governance actors, including private sector actors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). Informed by theories of authority in earth system governance, this research explores the motivation and roles of actors engaging in PPPs, the activities they participate in, and the partnerships they create. Our findings reveal how through PPPs, the private sector utilizes the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a form of moral authority to exhibit corporate social responsibility (CSR). We also find that the unique capabilities of pro-PPP NGOs enable them to serve as connectors between actors in facilitating water PPPs. With climate change accelerating the strain on water resources and water access globally, understanding diverse actor engagement and collaboration in the sector is crucial for addressing current and future water challenges.

In the water governance context, a diverse set of actors beyond the state, including NGOs, IGOs, and the private sector, are coming together in PPPs to draw from the strengths of different actors in working toward a common goal. PPPs create a formal space of collaboration in which actors exhibit authority. Actors exhibit authority in different ways across diverse contexts. If we think of power as the ability to influence and prescribe behavior and of authority as the recognition of that power as legitimate, the expansion of authority to a larger circle of actors is significant in that it expands who has the ability and is seen to have the legitimacy to influence the behavior of others (Abers & Keck, 2013). Technology and globalization forces have accelerated the rate at which this creation of authority is possible and the scale at which it can be exerted (Yaziji & Doh, 2009).

Building on this idea, Abers & Keck (2013, p. 2) present practical authority, ‘understood as the kind of power-in-practice generated when particular actors (individuals or organizations) develop capabilities and win recognition within a particular policy area, enabling them to influence the behavior of other actors.’ This approach examines the possibility of exerting authority through capabilities such as venue shopping, garnering social respect, coordinating multiple organizations to solve a problem, and contributing scientific knowledge and technical skills (Abers & Keck, 2013).

As actors become more efficient in utilizing these alternative capabilities, scholars recognize a shift in authority from state to non-state actors (Joslin & Jepson, 2018) and from government to governance as ‘political authority is being redistributed upwards, downwards and outwards, creating a system of multilevel governance in which governments play a less central role in governing’ (Betsill & Bulkeley, 2003, p. 189). Bulkeley (2012) references private authority which is derived from sources outside of the state such as knowledge, reputation, morality, science, the market, and affiliation. Both private authority (Bulkeley, 2012) and practical authority (Abers & Keck, 2013) depend on the recognition of others that the authority exists. Actors bring different capabilities and types of authority to the table that lend legitimacy to a project or partnership and motivate diverse actors to work together.

In the water infrastructure sector, private sector engagement in PPPs is highlighted for providing much-needed funding for water infrastructure which can ‘eliminate the problems that typically blight public sector run utilities, such as patronage and short-termism’ (Mandri-Perrot & Stiggers, 2013, p. 6). PPP projects have been credited with increasing work productivity and reducing operation costs (Ameyaw & Chan, 2015). Private sector engagement in PPPs is sometimes praised for providing greater efficiency, transparency, funding sources, technology, skills, and innovation, and contracts that force companies to think in the long term (Qian et al., 2020). It is suggested that private sector engagement results in the highest value for money by allocating risks to the party who is least risk-averse and best able to manage risks at the least cost (Ameyaw & Chan, 2016).

Further, a significant appeal of PPPs may be their ability to increase the appearance of legitimacy through greater stakeholder engagement (Dellas, 2012). Yet, some researchers question the democratic credentials of PPPs including the real extent of local stakeholder engagement and the implications of technological improvements (Pattberg et al., 2012). Other criticisms include that private sector engagement in the water sector may exclude those who cannot afford to pay, ignore less profitable areas, be less representative, and lack accountability (Dellas, 2012). Others still argue that PPPs are more complex and time-consuming to arrange than traditional projects and tend to have higher transaction costs for both the public and private sectors (Mandri-Perrot & Stiggers, 2013). A lens of authority can help us analyze and understand the motivation and roles of actors engaging in PPPs, the activities they participate in, and the partnerships and interdependencies created.

With no universally accepted definition of PPPs and considerable variation in what different actors consider a PPP, we take a broad approach to PPPs as a formal collaboration between the public and private sector in the purported interest of the public. Our empirical method began by identifying actors based on a review of the literature on water PPPs. We used the search terms ‘water PPP’ and ‘water public–private partnership’ in Google Scholar, The University of Arizona Library search engine, and as a Google Keyword search to identify the scholarship on water PPPs in both the academic and gray literatures. Prominent actors engaged in water PPPs that appeared more than once in the literature were noted and then grouped into categories based on shared characteristics for further investigation. The categories include private sector actors, NGOs, and IGOs. This categorization reflects a broader recognition of actor constellations in water governance that range from purely public to hybrid and exclusively private (Pattberg & Stripple, 2008), working to develop norms and shape solutions in governance (Dellas et al., 2011).

We adopted a mix of inductive and deductive approaches to analyze the data periodically during our data collection process. Researchers argue that inductive and deductive approaches are linked in research and that a continual interchange is necessary between the two (Perry & Jenson, 2001). Similarities and differences between actors within each actor category were analyzed and used to inform further analysis and to identify connections across types of actors and with the existing literature.

Each actor identified was studied in-depth using a codebook to understand their framing of and engagement with PPPs. Information on actors for the codebook was derived from internet searches of the actors' official websites and related promotional documents, white papers, news articles, and videos along with a Google keyword search. The codebook included information on the mission, history and year founded of each actor as well as their role in PPPs and framing of PPPs and water. Ultimately, of 29 actors investigated across all categories, 16 were excluded, leaving the total number of individual actors studied at 13 (see Supplementary material, Table S1 for a full listing and further details on actor exclusion).

After identifying our final 13 actors, we conducted a more in-depth search in the gray literature of each actor. Informed by our theoretical framework, we also identified documents through Google keyword searches of each actor name with ‘water PPP’ and ‘water Public Private Partnership’ and examined each document noting ways in which each actor exhibits authority, such as through coordination, reputation, and expertise (Abers & Keck, 2013). To understand how actors exert agency through engagement with PPPs, we analyzed the language, activities, and partnerships at play for each actor. For example, we searched for the histories and timelines of each actor to understand how their goals, activities, priorities, and partnerships evolved and changed over time. Similarities and differences between actors within and across actor categories were analyzed empirically and used to inform further analysis and to identify connections across types of actors and with the existing literature.

In reviewing the roles of key actors engaged in water PPPs, we begin with the actors engaged the longest, the private sector. We then review the roles of NGOs and IGOs. This allows us to capture the evolution of engagement over time. We are keenly interested in the actors' motivations and roles in engaging in PPPs, the activities they participate in, and the partnerships they create.

The primary private sector actors engaged in PPPs include (1) two American-based beverage companies: Coca Cola and PepsiCo; and (2) two French-based water, waste, and energy companies: Suez and Veolia. In terms of the language they adopt, these corporations emphasize the financial success of their company and the various brands they have acquired while also portraying a dedication to sustainability and making a difference in their advertising and promotional materials. In contrast, the two water companies state their primary purpose and aim as preserving and restoring the planet and contributing to human progress with an emphasis on sustainable practices in their operations. Each of these private sector actors has a global presence and has made a business of partnering with and acquiring other brands and companies.

Water PPPs provide a way for beverage companies' to increase the reliability of water sources while also improving their image as community contributors. Coca Cola and PepsiCo financially support projects such as Water Funds primarily in areas where they have a bottling plant (TNC, 2022a). With Water Funds, ‘urban water users essentially tax themselves to fund water conservation and quality improvement efforts higher up in their watershed’ (Jenkins, 2019, p. 1). As an example, the Nairobi Water Fund is a partnership between Coca Cola, The Nature Conservancy, and a number of other business partners that aims to address both water quality and water quantity issues by promoting methods such as planting bamboo around streams to keep topsoil on farms and reducing the amount of river water used upstream through the installation of rainwater harvesting retention ponds. Farmers are also connected with the Water Fund through a text message network in which they are surveyed on their current farming methods, given technical advice, and informed of opportunities and markets where they can acquire new crop varieties (TNC, 2015).

Suez and Veolia are also active partners in and promoters of water PPPs, offering services to municipalities for the creation of various types of PPP contracts including billing and collections, infrastructure and tank services, long-term leases, design and construction, and maintenance. Suez has more than 500 drinking water and sanitation plants on the continent of Africa alone and just recently concluded a deal for the first water PPP in Tunisia, cleaning up wastewater in the southern part of the country (AfricaNews, 2023). With a presence on five continents, Veolia is the ‘world's largest private player in the water sector, in 2022 Veolia supplied 111 million people with drinking water and 97 million with wastewater services across the world’ (Veolia, 2023a, p.1). Private sector actors play a role in water services provision globally, see Table 1.

Some NGOs identified for their engagement with PPPs can be considered pro-PPP for their work with private sector partners and governments in designing and implementing water PPP projects in developing countries around the globe. These include the World Wildlife Fund (WFF), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), and WaterAid. Their activities around PPPs reflect their stated organizational missions with work promoting good water governance, corporate water stewardship, addressing climate change, protecting land and water, changing behaviors, and rallying support through partnerships and policy advocacy.

Pro-PPP NGO activity uncovered in this research includes the provision of clean water access to communities in India by WaterAid with the assistance of PepsiCo funding. Another example is WWF working with Coca Cola to ‘improve environmental performance’ across Coca Cola's supply chains and bringing together influential partners to address global environmental challenges (WWF & Coca Cola, 2017). Finally, TNC conducted training bringing together partners in existing and potential future water funds, a type of PPP, with the goal of matching new participants with mentors and meeting annually (TNC, 2022b).

In contrast, anti-PPP NGOs founded more recently, like Food & Water Watch (FWW), Blue Planet Project (BPP), and Transnational Institute (TNI), take corporations and government agencies to court, publish and disseminate research to educate and encourage people and organizations to take action, and bring together a diversity of actors in a global movement to end water privatization and facilitate partnerships between public utilities and public service unions (TNI, 2015). Examples of anti-PPP NGO activity include the creation of the WATER (Water Affordability, Transparency, Equity, and Reliability) Act by FWW which presents legislation to ‘bridge the current water-funding gap by taxing offshore corporate profits in the year they are generated’ with the goal of keeping water public and managing it as a ‘common resource, not a profit center’ and providing ‘tap water as [a] public service, not a business’ (FWW, 2021, p. 1). Further, BPP and TNI submitted recommendations for a UN report on the human right to water and sanitation, highlighting their concerns about the ‘role of bilateral and multilateral donors in promoting the privatization of water and sanitation services and facilitating corporate water resource grabs’ (Karunanthan, 2017, p. 1). TNI facilitates partnerships between public water utilities and public service unions (TNI, 2015).

While acknowledging the inadequacies of many state-run systems, anti-PPP NGOs suggest partnership alternatives to PPPs that exclude the private sector in the form of Public–Public Partnerships in which municipalities partner with each other and Water Operators Partnerships. For example, anti-PPP NGOs working in concert with other NGOs in the global water justice movement, which they describe as trans-local, created a toolkit to support local movements to defend and reclaim public water services (BPP, n.d.b). Public–public partnerships and Water Operators Partnerships are praised for keeping services and management local and for providing the collaborative benefits of a PPP without the profit-extracting focus of private operators. While these partnership alternatives provide a more nuanced perspective of water PPPs, they exclude the private sector which forms a key component of this research, see Table 2.

IGOs are actively engaged in promoting PPPs. Most predominantly, the World Bank creates and disseminates information promoting PPPs through PPP frameworks, risk assessment tools, and recommended policy guidelines and contract provisions, ‘when governments choose to use public–private partnerships (PPPs), the World Bank Group helps ensure they're designed well, benefit from a balanced regulatory environment and good governance, and are fiscally sustainable’ (World Bank, n.d., p. 1). They provide information and recommendations on PPPs in the water sector as well as case studies and lessons learned. The PPP Knowledge Lab, within the World Bank, provides country-level PPP data such as which unit in the country is responsible for PPPs and country-specific laws and regulations.

Similarly, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports on the PPP potential of various countries around the globe and both UNDESA and the World Bank publish data on who is investing in infrastructure globally and in what countries and sectors. UNDP partners with the private sector in PPP projects in the developing world. For example, UNDP has a PPP partnership with Coca Cola in Uzbekistan to improve ‘health care in the Aral Sea region by providing access to safe drinking water in rural areas’ (UNDP, 2022, p. 1). A stated emphasis on the sustainability of projects after their time has ended is prevalent among these IGOs. Some, like the World Bank, list PPPs and water as separate and distinct development issues, see Table 3.

In our study of actor engagement in water PPPs, we uncover a strong interconnectedness between actors engaged in PPPs as they work together in a variety of capacities and utilize their unique capabilities to exercise authority in water governance. In our quest to understand how and why diverse actors work together around water issues, we observe that actors collaborate with others based on their organizational values and goals and on how partnering with other actors serves their interests, fitting with the old adage of ‘you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours’. This suggests a reinforcing relationship or mutual dependency. For example, pro-PPP NGOs work with the private sector in order to receive much-needed funding out of a belief that enacting change in the private sector is essential for the health of the planet. In contrast, anti-PPP NGOs explicitly do not partner with the private sector and often speak out against other actors like IGOs for their engagement in PPPs. Other actors across categories maintain an appearance of openness toward collaboration with a variety of actors as befits a stance favorable to PPPs.

In analyzing the roles of actors in water PPPs, we identify the capabilities of different actor types through which they exhibit practical authority (Abers & Keck, 2013). By doing so, we observe the private sector as funders and operators, providing funding and operational expertise for water PPPs. NGOs serve as connectors, bringing different actors and resources together to facilitate PPPs. IGOs behave as trend-setters, promoting development frameworks such as the SDGs for easy sign-on by other actors.

Next, we analyze how actors use water PPPs and the SDGs to exhibit authority based on the moral high ground. We find that corporations use water PPPs and the SDG framework as a form of CSR to develop and maintain authority that bolsters their sustainability credibility. Finally, we break down the unique capabilities of pro-PPP NGOs that contribute to their role as connectors between other actor types in facilitating water PPPs.

Actors engaged in PPPs increasingly frame them as a mechanism for achieving the SDGs. In a globalized world in which actors continually seek partnerships to achieve goals, the SDGs provide a framework around which actors can coalesce (UNDESA, n.d.). However, with no monitoring or enforcement, they also have the potential to provide a smokescreen for continued unsustainable practices (Bali Swain, 2018). The SDGs specifically address water PPPs in the context of SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals. With the private sector often serving as the funding source for many water PPPs, their engagement is particularly sought.

Some scholars and government leaders argue that PPPs will help enhance socioeconomic growth and development through the ‘sharing of experiences, knowledge, skills, technology, and financial resources’ (Haque et al., 2020, p. 285). This change of focus to partnerships and including the private sector is a key shift in approach between the SDGs and their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (Marx, 2019).

Yet, others raise concerns that these aspirational words and goals mask continued unsustainable practices by actors as progress and commitments to the goals are nowhere monitored or enforced (Glass et al., 2023). Many cash-strapped cities around the world are making PPP deals with Veolia to address issues with aging water infrastructure and debt. As an example, in 2012, the City of Pittsburgh, USA made a PPP deal with Veolia to address a more than $720 million debt. Firing many employees and switching to a less-expensive corrosion control chemical, lead levels in the water skyrocketed along with water rates and incorrect meter readings (Hosea & Lerner, 2018). This heavily publicized scandal of Veolia was not lost on the international stage. When the state government of Lagos, Nigeria planned to pass control of the state's water resources to Veolia and two other multinational companies, activists intervened citing the Veolia Pittsburgh scandal as well as corruption charges associated with Veolia in Nagpur, India and bribery to exorbitantly raise water rates in Romania (Ezeamalu, 2017).

Some researchers argue that development buzzwords such as participation, empowerment, and poverty reduction can be linked together into chains of equivalence and twisted into ‘fuzz words’ that lose meaning due to their irrefutably positive connotations (Cornwall & Brock, 2005, p. 1056). We uncover how these buzzwords form into the fuzzy agreeableness of the SDGs and are used by actors to display authority in water governance based on the moral high ground of their good deeds. With no consistent monitoring and evaluation mechanism to measure the implementation and outcomes of actors' claims and actions, the beneficent outward faces of these actors may distract from their questionable practices elsewhere.

We find that private sector actors use water PPPs and the SDG framework as a form of CSR to develop and maintain the power-in-practice of practical authority (Abers & Keck, 2013). As a ‘management concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and interactions with their stakeholders’ (UNIDO, 2022, p. 1), CSR is seen as the most effective at increasing financial profit when it ‘addresses the main impacts of a firm instead of focusing on philanthropy that is not related to the core business’ (Weber & Saunders-Hogberg, 2020, p. 1939). Often used as a part of CSR, commitments to fuzzy, feel-good development frameworks like the SDGs signal a ‘social and environmental commitment to stakeholders [and] can help organizations secure competitive positions and even create new competitive advantages’ (Rosati & Galvão Diniz Faria, 2019, p. 588).

However, reporting on CSR and SDG targets can be easily manipulated. Companies often set water targets lower than previously achieved and exclude supply chain impacts (Weber & Saunders-Hogberg, 2020). Rosati & Galvão Diniz Faria (2019, p. 595) find that shared characteristics of groups that reference the SDGs in their sustainability reports include being large in size with additional resources to dedicate to sustainability practices, having ‘sensitive brands that they are willing to protect,’ and are more likely to ‘follow other related sustainability frameworks, such as the UN Global Compact’.

Coca Cola embraces the SDGs in a broad sense but prioritizes their water PPP work in areas where they have a bottling plant and are in need of reliable water for production. As part of their CSR efforts, Coca Cola has reported on their SDG progress including a commitment to replenish an equivalent amount of water used in their finished beverages by 2020 (Business for 2030, n.d.). Although in a 2020 report, they claim to have exceeded the goal, they use 1.84 liters of water per liter of final product. New goals for their 2030 water strategy are increasingly vague and less measurable including increasing water security and ‘improving water availability, quality, access and governance’ (Coca Cola Company, 2020, p. 8). Although not as obviously connected with the SDGs as Coca Cola, PepsiCo regularly releases an Environmental, Social, and Governance Summary that reports on their progress in achieving SDG goals. In addition to other water-related initiatives, PepsiCo also announced a goal of reintroducing more than 100% of the water used back into the local watershed by 2030. PepsiCo reported that they were at 34% replenishment in 2021, up from 18% the year before (PepsiCo, 2023).

Scholars point out that the CSR actions of corporations such as Coca Cola, which would include their embrace of the SDGs and work with water PPPs, enable corporations to exhibit authority in unique ways (Hayes, 2009). CSR allows corporations to assume a position of moral authority, access new, local areas for advertising by partnering with state actors and powerful NGOs, and mask questionable international corporate practices and avoid government regulation (Hayes, 2009). For example, in spite of claims to replenish the water used at their bottling plants, Coca Cola in India has faced criticism and closure orders for groundwater over-extraction and pollution at its plant in Uttar Pradesh (AFP, 2014). By partnering with NGOs and the state, corporations gain easy access to and understanding of remote areas where they can then apply more targeted marketing strategies, but also outsource much of their commodity chain to more affordable locations. This creates ‘a complex network that, through technology, is easy to manage, but difficult for consumers to understand, connect with, or visualize’ (Hayes, 2009, p. 23). Some research suggests that CSR involvement by food and beverage corporations can actually increase financial performance (Weber & Saunders-Hogberg, 2020). By engaging in PPPs, Coca Cola and PepsiCo can absolve themselves of responsibility for wrongdoing that occurs at outsourced bottling plants and at distant, ingredient-producing plantations.

However, in some sense, these multinational beverage companies, because of their global renown on an individual level, are under more intense scrutiny than other multinational companies with a less immediate and personal connection to billions of individuals because of the nature of their products (household food and beverage names versus makers of construction equipment). For example, Teather (2006) detailed multiple cases around the world of accusations of Coca Cola's questionable social and environmental practices such as polluting a lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria and union busting in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Pakistan. News of these cases was met with student protests and boycotts and Coca Cola responded by engaging in CSR efforts to improve its global image such as organizing an annual beach cleanup in Lagos and signing onto the UN Global Compact (Teather, 2006). We argue that the unique and more personal relationship with their customers of these particular corporations motivates engagement with water PPPs and the SDGs. A common method used by corporations to display their sustainability contribution and commitment is connecting with NGOs for their positive reputational benefits.

Pro-PPP NGOs are gaining momentum as connectors and as a partner of choice in water PPPs because of the reputational benefits they provide, their ability to morph with current development trends to attract funding and support, and their communication skills and ability to sell these partnerships both to their partners and to the public. We examine the fluidity of authority as expressed through three capabilities of pro-PPP NGOs that place them in a connecting role in water PPPs.

First, pro-PPP NGOs exhibit the capability to positively impact the reputation of other actors with whom they work by connecting them with reputation-enhancing, on-the-ground projects that are then promoted in the media. For example, a 2022 WaterAid post announced their partnership with PepsiCo Foundation around the ‘Access to Safe Water’ project in West Bengal, India. With photos, stats, and quotes from the PepsiCo India president and the WaterAid India Chief Executive, the article touts a partnership providing access to clean water, improved sanitation and hygiene, and groundwater recharge in an area that is part of the PepsiCo supply chain and contributes to achieving PepsiCo's 2030 water goals (Greene, 2022). While some scholars (Daniel & Sojamo, 2012) challenge the notion that NGOs are good and the private sector is bad, others (Yaziji & Doh, 2009) argue that the authority of NGOs is often derived from their good name and seen in the reputational benefits they provide, as well as through networking and expertise (Abers & Keck, 2013).

In 2009, WWF, TNC, and a number of other partners created the non-profit Alliance for Water Stewardship as a standard promoting sustainable freshwater use among corporations. The Alliance for Water Stewardship provides core, gold, or platinum certifications for specific sites based on their implementation of the standard and a list of certified sites including specific Coca Cola bottling plants is available online. According to the Alliance for Water Stewardship website, ‘certificated sites tell us that achieving AWS certification brings demonstrable benefits in regards to relationships with customers, increased investor confidence, strengthened social license to operate, brand perception and dialogue with regulators and policy makers’ (AWS, 2023, p. 1).

A positive reputation among for-profit actors ultimately increases their bottom line (Weber & Saunders-Hogberg, 2020), bestowing authority on NGOs as partners and connectors. Some scholars argue that NGOs have ‘supplanted the role of host governments in the historic business–government bargaining relationship such that NGOs yield significant power over the multinational enterprise's right to operate in developing countries’ (Yaziji & Doh, 2009, p. 16). For example, in the first Water Fund PPP in Ecuador, TNC partnered with the municipal public water utility in Quito, Ecuador to create a trust fund paid for by urban water users to incentivize land managers upstream to adopt conservation practices protecting the quantity and quality of water flowing into the city. In the process, they created a new territory based on the watershed that was legitimized by its association with democratic participation. While the NGO bypassed the state in creating the new territory, it also opened the opportunity for the city to then exert influence on rural areas that were once out of their purview (Joslin & Jepson, 2018).

Second, NGOs are better situated because of their funding status and comparatively smaller size and anonymity among the general public to morph with current development trends and attract funding and support. For example, in the case of WWF, while maintaining their iconic panda logo, their activities have shifted and expanded over time from an exclusive focus on species-related conservation projects to partnerships with corporations like Coca Cola and Wal-Mart around sustainability issues in their supply chains and other initiatives directed at addressing climate change, renewable energy, and analysis of the state of the world's free-flowing rivers (WWF, 2022a). Despite this expansion of activities, the main face of the organization continues to be majestic and adorable animals with headlines of how impossibly cute puppies will protect herders and snow leopards in Mongolia and symbolic adoption opportunities complete with photos and stuffed animals (WWF, 2022b). WWF and other NGOs adeptly use their capabilities of marketing, garnering social respect, scientific knowledge and skills, and coordinating multiple organizations to solve a problem to assert authority in environmental governance (Abers & Keck, 2013). Even beyond the large, powerful, pro-PPP NGOs investigated in this paper, the lower price and accessibility of technology has made it easier for smaller, low-budget NGOs to influence debates and to exercise practical authority as well (Yaziji & Doh, 2009).

Finally, NGOs have the communication skills and expertise to invest in and ‘sell’ these partnerships. Water PPPs make ideal projects for attracting diverse partners in that they can make an easy enough tie-in to a host of other issues including land and species protection, public health, girls' education, and water and food security. This demonstrates the fluidity of expressions of authority. When framed correctly, everyone has an interest in the creation of successful water PPPs. However, some scholars warn of a dark side to alliances between NGOs and the private sector in particular (Joslin & Jepson, 2018). Directing the focus of consumers to distant, exotic locales distracts the consumers' attention away from their own participation in more proximal environmental degradation, thereby continuing the very practices that degrade the environment elsewhere (Brockington & Duffy, 2010). For example, NGOs such as Greenpeace and the WWF promote whale watching as an alternative to the practice of whaling. However, Neves (2010) found that this alternative, while ostensibly a more sustainable practice, sustains major ecological costs in transporting tourists to remote island locations for whale-viewing, and whale watching boats impede the echolocation abilities of whales and impact their behavior.

Although partnerships between diverse actors have proven successful in getting things done, what they accomplish often does not align well with their original professed intention. Despite inevitable shortcomings and although sometimes criticized for selling their souls to corporations (Vidal, 2014), NGOs continue to partner with private sector actors and governments and appear to be a key component in getting water PPPs rolling. Using their unique capabilities of communication and technical skills and expertise, connecting actors with each other, and positive reputational benefits, NGOs exhibit practical authority (Abers & Keck, 2013).

We conclude that NGOs are uniquely positioned as connectors between different actors in part because of their appearance of neutrality and as possessors of moral authority. Through this unique role, they have the opportunity to direct corporate funding in a positive direction. Saving pandas and rivers and drought-ridden rural villages has a different emotional appeal and urgency than passing a sugary soda around the world. In an age of increasing public concern about the environment and climate change, NGOs already working in these fields are able to morph with changing trends and are uniquely positioned to ride the wave and use the fluidity of authority to bring other actors along with them.

Figure 1 displays how actors help to serve or promote water PPPs and how, in turn, water PPPs help with the achievement of different actor goals. First, pro-PPP NGOs provide communication, marketing skills, design, and implementation to water PPPs and the private sector. They also use water PPPs to achieve their water goals such as clean water access, improved sanitation and hygiene, and wildlife habitat restoration. Second, the private sector provides pro-PPP NGOs with funding, and in exchange, pro-PPP NGOs provide the private sector with expertise, positive reputational benefits, and access to remote areas for advertising and affordable commodity chains. Third, the private sector provides water PPPs with funding, operation, infrastructure services, billing and collections, design, construction, and maintenance. In exchange, water PPPs provide the private sector with profits for utility operators, increased reliability of beverage company water sources, and an improved image as community contributors. Finally, IGOs provide the private sector with development framings that they can easily adopt to improve the sustainability of their operations and their public image. Water PPPs are seen as a mechanism by which IGOs can achieve their SDGs. IGOs create and disseminate information such as risk assessment tools, policy guidelines, and contract provisions for water PPPs. IGOs also provide pro-PPP NGOS with development framings around which to coalesce their work and partnerships.

Through our study of diverse actor engagement in water PPPs, we examine how actors use PPPs and the SDGs as a means of achieving the moral high ground. This leads us to a compelling connection between water PPPs, the SDGs, and CSR. Although the motivation for the private sector's engagement in CSR and water PPPs remains murky and certainly primarily motivated by profit, there is the potential for increased funding for water projects and services globally and increased pressure on other private sector actors to invest in the same. We further examine the SDGs and water PPPs as forms of CSR that encourage private sector actors in particular to take action for sustainability and care for people and the planet, at least on paper.

Pro-PPP NGOs further fill a crucial connector and legitimizing role in these partnerships by providing positive reputational benefits as wielders of moral authority with a neutral appearance as well as the communication skills and expertise to promote these partnerships and bring diverse actors on board. Many backs are being scratched creating a mutual dependency through the interactions and partnerships of various actors in water PPPs, but the effectiveness of PPPs in addressing global water challenges beyond the goals of individual actors is still up for debate.

This research contributes a much-needed analysis of the roles of different actors in water PPPs and how their unique goals and capabilities dictate their engagement in water PPPs. Our investigation is intended to be broad and to synthesize across what is known in order to shed light on the motivations for actor behaviors and offer insights into how different capabilities and motivations for action are utilized to address global water challenges. As potential next steps, we suggest further research to better understand empirically the roles of different actors in water PPP projects in case studies of specific contexts and geographic locations as well as a classification system of types of PPPs to take into account which PPPs have the most influence on overall benefits of water projects and systems. Examining the role of actors in water PPPs is useful for anyone interested in PPPs, whether in favor of or opposed. Whether taking the form of PPPs or other types of partnerships and collaboration around water, there is an increase in both the diversity and quantity of actors engaged in addressing water challenges. Understanding the role different actors play in these partnerships and their motivations for action contributes to the creation of more effective partnerships and dialogue within partnerships and breaks through some of the fog surrounding water PPPs by showing who is doing what and why. With climate change exacerbating water resource supply and access globally, understanding the motivations, goals, and interactions of diverse actors engaged in water partnerships is crucial for addressing water challenges moving forward.

Data cannot be made publicly available; readers should contact the corresponding author for details.

The authors declare there is no conflict.