EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
aging populations. They also show great variety in how basic services are provided, funded and governed, and in the allocation of responsibility between different levels of government, public utilities, private enterprises (from local to multinational) and civil society. This diversity is found not just between regions, but between and within countries. In Africa, the greatest challenge is still the provision of basic services to both the rural and urban poor, particularly the region’s 225 million slum dwellers (almost 40% of the urban population). In Asia Pacific, service access and quality varies widely both between high, middle and low-income countries, and between large, well-resourced cities and their smaller counterparts. Access to basic services for the more than 550 million slum dwellers is also a critical problem. In Eurasia, almost every country has halted the deterioration in services after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but renovating infrastructure remains a challenge. In Europe, access and quality is good but service budgets are under pressure after the global financial and economic crisis. Latin America has seen progress in both decentralization and basic service provision over the last two decades, with an innovative role often played by local governments in partnership with civil society. In the Middle East and West Asia, service provision is generally centralized at national government level, except in Turkey. Water stress is a particular challenge across the region. In North America, the greatest issue is the backlog of underinvestment in infrastructure, a problem, both for improving services and maintaining current levels of provision. In both Africa and the Middle East, many countries face additional challenges of conflict and insecurity that affect basic service infrastructure and provision. While central governments tend to play an important role in service provision in small
countries, state or regional authorities are often more important in countries with large populations, especially those with federal structures. Countries also differ in how many levels of government they have, depending on their size, population and political factors. Much of the regional variation in basic service provision, however, relates to the structure of local governments. There are 1.1 million of them in Asia and the Pacific alone, around 2 million globally, and they are very diverse; their jurisdictions range from a few square kilometres to tens of thousands, with populations from a few thousand (or less), to over 20 million. Regional, provincial and state governments can serve over 200 million inhabitants, and the largest metropolitan authorities have populations larger than most countries. It is difficult to generalize about local governments within countries, and even more so at international level. Geographical, social and institutional diversity all influence the capacity of local governments to deliver services. The disparities are even starker in many low- and middle-incomes countries where rural municipalities face even greater challenges in meeting the needs of smaller, dispersed populations, especially in peripheral regions.
ACCESS TO BASIC SERVICES: THE SCALE OF UNMET NEEDS Water and sanitation: GOLD III points to impressive improvements in both the coverage and quality of water and sanitation services in many regions over recent decades. Many countries in Asia, Latin America, and North and South Africa are approaching almost universal coverage of water from ‘improved sources,’ meeting MDG targets.1 However, coverage is declining in Sub-Saharan Africa and there