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.
The world will not reach the sanitation Millennium Development Goal. There are still 1 in 3 people worldwide without access to safe sanitation. Within 15 years we want universal sanitation coverage and we know that we need to do something drastically different to reach scale and to reach the... Read more...
America's crumbling infrastructure: It's not a sexy problem, but it is a scary one. Read more...
In this blog, economist and IRC's head of innovation and international programme Catarina Fonseca argues that taxation is crucial in reaching the post-2015 development agenda. "Tax is a prerequisite for governments to become truly democratically accountable to their people," she says. Read more...
The growth of inequality is a major threat to prosperity and stability. Government leadership and government investment is needed to provide water and sanitation services to the poor. Read more...
In this blog, IRC's head of innovation and international programme Catarina Fonseca discusses the financing of the post-2015 development goals. "A substantial part of funding for development should be sought elsewhere," she argues. Through public finance. Or tax, as we call it. Read more...
Understanding the difference between charity, venture philanthropy and impact investing is key to getting businesses and programmes funded Read more...
Universal coverage of water, sanitation and hygiene looks set to be included in the Sustainable Development Goals. What finally ends up in these goals will determine the agenda for the WASH sector for decades to come. Read more...
What happens when people cannot pay for water and sanitation services? Mostly, we hear about women and girls in low income countries and how they access polluted water from ponds, rivers or hand dug wells. This week, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (USA) made it to international news for... Read more...
A joint letter from private sector, civil society and academic organisations was sent to the United Nations' Open Working Group with one firm message: Let's work together to finish the unfinished business of the MDGs and strive far beyond to a future of universal access to water, sanitation and... Read more...
Judging by the number of posts on Twitter, evidence for decision making seems to be a hot topic at the moment not only in the WASH sector but more broadly in the development realm. Read more...
The vision for WASH in the post-2015 development agenda is one of universal access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene in our time. No one should practice open defecation. Everyone should have safe water, sanitation and hygiene at home. All schools and health centres should have water,... Read more...