A/HRC/24/44 and local ownership. The lack of long-term focus has been linked to a lack of political incentives, particularly for donors, to put resources towards maintaining existing infrastructure, over building new ones that give better visibility for their investment and support. 2. Private service provision 43. Austerity measures are often accompanied by calls for increased private sector participation, including in the water and sanitation sectors, as a means for governments to raise revenue. The Special Rapporteur has previously outlined key challenges from a human rights perspective relating to private water and sanitation service provision (see A/HRC/15/31). 44. While certain safeguards are in place in several countries to protect consumers, for example from disconnections due to non-payment of bills in cases of inability to pay, there remain concerns relating to sustainability. Often profits made by private operators are almost fully distributed among shareholders, rather than being partially reinvested in maintaining and extending service provision, the result being increased prices for consumers, continued need for public investment, and potentially unsustainable services. For instance, when contracts fail to incorporate minimum levels of spending on operation and maintenance of systems, this affects their sustainability. 45. Private service provision can also create concerns for other important human rights principles and standards, such as the principles of participation and accountability. During the current crisis, private sector participation in public services delivery, including in water provision, has been a condition for bailout packages signed with indebted countries.59 Once the decision to privatize has been made, and especially in the context of economic crisis, the process of selling the assets often does not include sufficient opportunities for meaningful public participation. D. Inappropriate technology choices 46. Choosing the right technology is essential to achieving sustainability of water and sanitation services. While human rights law does not call for or reject any specific type of technology, States have often made wrong or inappropriate decisions to invest in technology that is either too costly or complicated; uses too much water or too much electricity; is very cheap, but does not last; or is inappropriate in a given context, not taking into account cultural or other preferences. One example is the installation of flush toilets in water-scarce regions, which people are forced to stop using after a certain time (A/HRC/21/42/Add.3, para. 33). 47. During one country mission, the Special Rapporteur witnessed a donor-led solution responding to limited freshwater availability that has led to the installment of desalination plants, despite few successes. The operation and maintenance of desalination plants is costly and requires a high level of technical capacity. On isolated small islands, solely relying on desalination plants for water provision is unsustainable but the strategy continues to attract donors and Governments (see A/HRC/24/44/Add.1). In another country, the Special Rapporteur learned about decisions taken by municipalities to invest in conventional centralized systems in areas of low population density, the results being high per-household costs, when small-scale on-site systems could be significantly cheaper and 59 See for example the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies and Technical Memorandum of Understanding between the International Monetary Fund and Greece of 21 December 2012. Available from www.imf.org/external/np/loi/2012/grc/122112.pdf 13