Stakeholders say that public investment, not privatisation, is necessary to plug gaps in water and sanitation public services, lamenting that “public sector solutions are notably absent from current policy debates even though they have been the mainstay of infrastructure development across the world.” They say this should be a priority “at the next meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They wanted the November meeting of COP22 [in Morocco] to integrate issues related to water supply and sanitation with the climate change agenda. (…) As the limitations of water privatisation have become clear, there have been calls for innovation in private financing mechanisms. One example is the use of public resources to stimulate private sector investment through ‘blended finance.’ This is where the government provides subsidies and/or guarantees to encourage commercial financiers to invest in water. But a number of concerns have been raised with this approach. Private capital is not a substitute for public capital and is volatile and expensive. To date there seems to be little justification for diverting limited public resources toward trying to attract investors into the sector rather than investing government funds in water directly.”