Transparency, information sharing and involvement of users and local communities in the decision making process will also ensure greater acceptance of projects (Bahri, 2009). Involvement of local NGOs and environmental groups can help build up credibility, trust and confidence. As a basis for building trust between stakeholders, there is a need to convey simple, clear and reliable information. The establishment of a best management practice framework, as described earlier in this paper, and transparency in the management and decision process is very much needed (Bixio _et al._ , 2006). Water quality data must be widely available and freely shared with users and the general public. Communities need to be able to express their needs and suggestions in open multi-stakeholder platforms.

Cultural values may also play an important part in the acceptability of wastewater use, particularly where religious views on ritual purity are highly articulated, for example in Islam and Hinduism (World Bank, 2005). In order to address concerns in Islamic countries, _Fatwas_ (i.e., legal statements issued by religious scholars) have been issued in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates stating that wastewater may be used for irrigation provided that the impurities present in raw wastewater are removed. This has succeeded in overcoming the religious concerns of authorities, farmers and the public (Bahri, 2008a).

_5.2.4 Involving the private sector in financing and managing wastewater treatment_ Given the very low initial levels of wastewater treatment in developing countries, and the vital importance of reducing health risks in wastewater irrigation projects, an approach is needed that simultaneously makes the best use of available investment resources to upgrade existing treatment plants and to build new facilities, and generates sufficient additional financial flows to ensure the sustainable operation of treatment facilities and provide for future expansions.

Wastewater treatment is capital intensive. Until recently, major treatment works in developing countries were financed by governments or public utilities, often with the help of loans from international or bilateral agencies accompanied by central government guarantees against commercial and political risk. Given the general lack of experience in wastewater treatment plant design and operation, major projects were typically contacted out piecemeal – preliminary studies and design with a specialized engineering firm, construction with a private contractor, equipment with one or more suppliers, and supervision with an engineering firm. As a result of government guarantees against commercial risk and public project management, many of the treatment plants built in developing countries were plagued by cost overruns, implementation delays, and operations and maintenance difficulties. In such cases WWTPs were on the road to failure as soon as they were commissioned (Murray and Drechsel, 2010).

In order to overcome these difficulties, some middle- and high-income countries have turned to the private sector to help operate and even finance treatment investments in large cities. Two models have been successful for wastewater treatment in general and wastewater irrigation in particular. The first model is the Design-Build-Operate (DBO) contract in which a firm or consortium of firms is responsible for building and subsequently operating the plant for a specified period of time. Payment is usually on a price per m<sup>3</sup> basis, and is tied to the successful operation of the plant and meeting effluent quality standards. In this case, the government or public utility owns the plant and still undertakes to finance the investment, but the commercial risk for operation is assigned to the private partner.

An improvement is to allocate the commercial risk for both investment and operation to a private consortium through a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) agreement. This model requires that the private partner builds, owns and operates the treatment plant for a defined period of time – usually 20 to 30 years – and transfers ownership to the public partner at the end of that time frame free of charge and in good operating condition. A variant of this model is the Build-Own-Operate (BOO) agreement in which private ownership is retained indefinitely. The private partner normally recovers its investment and operating costs through a price per m<sup>3</sup> payment over the life of the agreement.

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