If you are representing a municipality or a central government, and you have to deal with water MNCs in concluding an agreement, what will you do?

I wrote a paper on this issue for a conference held by the IELRC in Geneva, last April. Here's the abstract:

Due to financial and technological reasons, water undertakings are often being conducted by large scale Multi National Corporations (MNC). Governments often positioned Regional Authorities as a regulator to these MNCs, and at the same time engaged in water contracts with them through State Owned Enterprise (SOE).

However, the relationship between Water MNC and Governments is asymmetrical as MNCs can move their assets overnight, transfer their ownership to third parties, seek various means of redress through bilateral, regional or international investment treaties and avoid confiscation by reallocating their assets. These are often done by hiding behind multiple jurisdictions enjoyed either by their parent companies, subsidiaries or shareholders.

The positions of Governments are the opposite as they do not have the flexibilities enjoyed by MNCs. This paper attempts to prescribe issues that need to be highlighted in safeguarding water contracts in Indonesia.

The first part discusses the legal relationship between institutions involved in a water undertaking. The second part listed down regulatory mechanisms in Indonesian context, more specific towards the impact of Constitutional Court’s review of the Water Law (2004). The third part of the paper examines the provisions existing normally in water contracts between a local subsidiary of MNC and regional authorities and presents a point of view in drafting the clauses.

Note that all laws mentioned there are as of March, 2007. The investment law has been modified recently. See the paper here.