Local issues at the heart of sustainable management
At territorial level, SUEZ sustainable management strategy is to transform local constraints into real opportunities for innovation and improved performance. The Group's subsidiaries design and manage their industrial projects taking all local aspects into account, from protecting the environment to the economic situation, and including social development. They offer their industrial and local authority clients global and sustainable solutions based on the Group's unique capacities: the ability to mobilize complementary skills in the areas of energy, water and waste management; and to provide innovative technical solutions that help to preserve the environment and reduce costs.
In collaboration with the other local public and private players, the Group also places its technical expertise and R&D capacities at the service of a region's environment and of its economic development. These public-private partnerships reflect a development of roles: public authorities are no longer the sole actors for economic and social change-citizens now also share in the responsibility for the future of their locality. For local authorities, partnerships with the private sector allow them to call on specific skills to meet the increasing demands to improve networks and infrastructure, for extension of access to services, and for lower costs. For SUEZ, fulfilling its mission means satisfying a dual requirement: establishing a constructive dialogue with the local authority client to better satisfy needs; and involving stakeholders, especially civil society and clients, to ensure transparent management of public services.
In major European cities, development of partnerships results, largely, from transfer of public service competences from central government to local authorities, which have become in just a few years major local economic actors. In developing countries, such partnerships allow the public authorities to assume their primary mission of providing equitable access to essential services.
