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.
A call to action for ministers of finance, with inspirational case studies and forward-looking sector perspectives. It is part of an initiative by... Read more...
This working paper unpacks what is meant by the enabling environment for finance in WASH and presents real examples of how these bottlenecks are... Read more...
Financial monitoring will be useful only if governments lead in setting the service-level standards they want to deliver to citizens. Read more...
This Research Review provides an overview of subsidy targeting strategies and the conditions under which they have proven successful or not, drawing... Read more...
Guidelines for European national and subnational policy-makers responsible for sustainable financing of small-scale water and sanitation services,... 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...
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...