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 short review of the existing landscape of international financial flows to the water sector, with specific focus on climate finance. Read more...
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 presentation provides a simplified definition and framework for blended finance, together with emerging themes and statistics for the water,... Read more...
How do you make development programmes inclusive and what challenges do you face. Read more...
The evaluation gives an appraisal of the impact of the Dutch development cooperation.budget cuts in 2010 on countries and programmes. One general... Read more...
This paper summarises current donor thinking on measuring sector progress towards developing sustained water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services... Read more...
An analysis of 11 global and regional trends in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector. 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...
The report describes results of an assessment of harmonisation and alignment, two key principles of Aid Effectiveness, in Ghana's water sector. 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...
Aid effectiveness: what does it entail and how to apply aid effectiveness principles in my daily work? Read more...
Progress has been made in recent years with implementing the aid effectiveness framework. Various studies show that the volume of development... Read more...
Although aid effectiveness in the WASH sector has improved in recent years, vigorous steps are needed to counter measures that can jeopardise... Read more...
This fact sheet presents global developments in WASH coverage and discusses its links to aid effectiveness. Read more...