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.
Ministers of Finance should increase funding for the enabling environment, make more use of micro and blended finance, and address the inequities in... Read more...
An introduction to ethical fundraising for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) organisations. Read more...
Assessing Value for Money of WASH services in small towns. Read the main findings on the analysis of costs for providing water and sanitation services in small town in Ethiopia. Read more...
This learning note includes estimates for capital expenditure and direct and indirect costs. Read more...
Reflections on Finance for water, sanitation and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals Read more...
Less misleading displays of financial data, such as stacked histograms, which separate capital and recurrent expenditure, are preferable to flow... Read more...
This document presents the case of the NGO Gram Vikas in Odisha, that has been developing and supporting community-managed rural water supplies... Read more...
In this document we capture the inputs that contributed in improving water supply to households and an assessment of the costs incurred in this... Read more...
This document captures the inputs that contributed to improving water supply to households and an assessment of cost by the Public Health and... Read more...
While global overviews of evidence are useful as a first step, there is a need for evidence related to specific contexts, such as rural or urban... Read more...
The Dutch Water Bank was initially established primarily to finance flood control, but the model is potentially applicable to other aspects of water... Read more...
Despite investing US$ 486 million in rural water supply in Tanzania between 2007-2014, coverage is stagnating and even declining. Who is to blame? Read more...
Many colleagues are developing mechanisms to track progress towards Goal 6 of the Sustainable Development Goals . Read more...
Only eight African countries provide data on sanitation expenditure. All of them are falling behind on their commitment to spend 0.5% of their Gross... 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...
This global review explores the strengths and weaknesses of integrity in the water sector. It provides examples of innovative programmes and tools... Read more...
This manual provides practical guidance to facilitate and standardise the implementation of social life-cycle costing to "improved" drinking-water... 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...
Why do we need domestic public finance for urban sanitation and how much of it being spent now. Read more...