Catarina Fonseca is trained as an economist and has a doctoral degree in water sciences. She has over twenty-three years of experience in development cooperation and non-profits of which twenty in the water and sanitation sector. She has pioneered sector development on the understanding of life-cycle costs and financing. She was the WASHCost Director (2008-2013), a large-scale initiative to identify the long-term costs of sustaining rural and peri-urban water and sanitation services. She has been part of the IRC management team and managed the International and Innovation programme from 2012-2019.
Catarina Fonseca was the Director of Watershed, a 5-year strategic programme that run from 2016-2020 to strengthen the ability of citizens to hold governments and service providers accountable for the services they deliver. She is an Associate of IRC and is available for consultancy assignments. Over the past 20 years she has trained, assessed, evaluated and provided technical support to over 50 clients. Since 2019 she has her own company, Pulsing Tide.
Watershed empowering citizens was a unique programme focused on advocacy and influencing. After 5 years, what have we learned? Read more...
Smarter emergency measures against COVID-19 needed to ensure lasting solutions in service provision. Read more...
New report triggers the setup of accountability platforms #Account4SDG6 Read more...
Asset inventory is essential in Ethiopia to develop more realistic planning to increase functionality as well as coverage. Read more...
Efficient tracking of water and sanitation sector financial data. Read more...
Last year we were discussing blended finance, what are we discussing now? Read more...
Reflections from the Finance in Common Summit Read more...
Highlighting financial and technical collaborative successes. Read more...
What is needed to eliminate inequalities and achieve universal access to sanitation? Read more...
10 things IRC, Water.org and the World Bank think you need to know about the enabling environment for finance in WASH Read more...
This Conference Perspective was co-authored by Patrick Moriarty for the OECD – GIZ Conference: Closing the gap for water in line with SDG ambitions: the role of blended finance, 4-5 October 2018, Eschborn, Germany. Read more...
All eyes are now on blended finance, but there are real challenges to using it in practice. Read more...
Regular audits, tight monitoring, stakeholder participation and tactful engagement with politicians can lead to more integrity. Read more...
The latest institutional developments around Goal 6 for water and sanitation were presented at World Water Week in Stockholm Read more...
Reflections on Finance for water, sanitation and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals Read more...
Many colleagues are developing mechanisms to track progress towards Goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals . Read more...
Yesterday was World Water Day and we were flooded with high hopes and a celebratory mood. Goals for the sector have been set last year and there are no significant changes on the horizon. With a business as usual approach, are we really going to achieve the SDGs for the water sector? Read more...
In 2014, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and IRC have started a collaboration to pilot the life-cycle cost approach in the context of refugee camps. Read more...
It costs at least US$ 10 per student to construct water and sanitation facilities in schools and another US$ 1.40 per student per year for all recurrent costs including continuous support to hygiene promotion. Read more...
Traditionally we've looked to the three Ts to finance water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, with the focus on transfers and tariffs. But this leaves a large financing gap. One which, if we don't solve, will make us miss the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of universal access. Read more...