Water Papers

183 items available

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16997

Water Papers are produced by the Water Global Practice, taking up the work of the predecessor Water Unit, Transport, Water and ICT Department, Sustainable Development Vice Presidency.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

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Water in Circular Economy and Resilience: The Case of Dakar, Senegal

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09-09) World Bank

This case study is part of a series prepared by the World Bank’s Water Global Practice to highlight existing experiences in the water sector. The purpose of the series is to showcase one or more of the elements that can contribute toward a Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) system. This case focuses on the experience of Dakar, Senegal.
Testing, Piloting, and Validation of the Rural Water Indicator Global Framework in the African Context

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-03-12) Banks, Brian ; Mendez-Castillo, Ethel ; Vargas-Ramirez, Miguel ; Zimmermann, Sabrina ; Loughnan, Libbet

This document presents the findings of the pilot conducted in Burkina Faso, Kenya, and Sierra Leone to determine the feasibility and utility of the indicators proposed by the World Bank in the Rural Water Metrics Global Framework. Through standard indicators, the proposed framework aims to facilitate improvements in national and global reporting and analysis, which would improve rural water services around the world. This document provides background on the framework; shows how it relates to other efforts to harmonize rural water data; and outlines development of the framework. It also describes the pilot—its methodology, findings, and limitations—and offers recommendations regarding the indicators themselves; suggests an implementation approach; and proposes a pathway for collection of the data using integration into national monitoring framework.
The Cubango-Okavango River Basin Multi-Sector Investment Opportunities Analysis: Summary Report

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12-01) World Bank

The Cubango-Okavango River Basin is one of the world's most unique, near pristine free-flowing rivers, and central to sustainable economic development within the arid landscapes of southern Africa. The complex flood pulse cycle provides important services for local communities while supporting a rich and unique biodiversity that makes it a wetland of international importance and World Heritage site. However, the commitments to peace and prosperity among the three countries—Angola, Botswana, and Namibia—and the broader efforts of the Southern African Development Community to facilitate greater regional integration provide prospects for increased and improved development. The Multi-Sector Investment Opportunities Analysis is part of a systematic strategy by the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission, a body established in 1994 by Angola, Botswana, and Namibia, to promote coordinated and sustainable water resources management, while addressing the legitimate social and economic needs of the member states. The environmental integrity and long-term protection of the basin depends on addressing the underlying drivers of poverty. Accelerated environmental changes in the basin are largely driven by four factors—population dynamics, land use change, poverty, and climate change—leading to deterioration in water quality, changes in the flood pulse and diminishing biota. As a result, the risks associated with persistent poverty threaten the long-term sustainability of the basin.
Water and Nutrition: A Framework for Action

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-08) Chase, Claire ; Bahuguna, Aroha ; Chen, Yue ; Haque, Sabrina ; Schulte, Mik

This framework for action was developed to support the inclusion of nutritional considerations in the design of water operations and to help formulate nutrition-enhancing water policy. Chronic undernutrition early in life can cause cognitive and physical impairments that prevent children from achieving their full potential and have lasting consequences on the human capital that is essential for economies of the future to be competitive. The authors present an integrated water and nutrition framework to aid in understanding the various ways that water impacts early child nutrition, drawing on the three dimensions of water security: water quantity, adequate supply of water resources; water quality, water that is free of contamination; and water accessibility, reliable availability to all people, economies, and ecosystems. Each of these in turn affects the underlying drivers of poor nutrition outcomes in children. Challenges associated with water-related conflict and water resources in the context of fragility cuts across each of the drivers of undernutrition. The framework complements guidance notes that describe the evidence of how water sector investments across irrigation, water management, and water supply and sanitation impact early child nutrition and summarize recommendations on how to design interventions for greater impact.
Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation: Sanergy in Nairobi, Kenya

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14) World Bank

This case study examines the container-based sanitation (CBS) service provided by Sanergy and how its business model fits overall in Nairobi as well as specifically in informal settlements there. Sanergy’s basic business concept is to provide safe sanitation to low-income residents of informal settlements in Nairobi and to create a sustainable value chain that converts feces into premium reuse products for agriculture. Sanergy provides single-cubicle, branded Fresh Life Toilets (FLTs) to franchisees for a fee and collects the excreta from the toilets on a frequent basis (daily or every two or three days). Satisfaction expressed by customers with Sanergy’s toilets was high and users of Sanergy’s toilets are paying much the same rates as they would for other toilet options. Overall, the FLT operation shows promise to provide a highly cost-effective sanitation solution at scale and the evolving policy landscape and significant investment by Sanergy and others has radically changed the status of CBS in a short time. Sanergy plans to scale significantly to serve as many as 500,000 people in its existing areas of operation, an ambitious expansion plan that will warrant further study and monitoring.
Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation: Clean Team in Kumasi, Ghana

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14) World Bank

This study is focused on Clean Team, a social enterprise providing container-based sanitation (CBS) services in Kumasi, the second-largest city in Ghana with a population of 2.7 million in 2018. Clean Team is owned by Water & Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP), a nonprofit partnership between the private sector, civil society, and academia. Clean Team delivers a single service: rental and regular servicing of in-house portable toilets, which includes transporting feces to a centralized treatment facility but not the processing and reuse of excreta. Customers find the Clean Team toilet appealing and Clean Team services are affordable compared to other alternatives. External subsidies, provided through public and philanthropic grant funding, have been necessary for Clean Team to cover its costs. Clean Team has been working, with support from funders and external advisers, on improving the efficiency of its services and reducing costs. Going forward, Clean Team could benefit from a clearer policy environment, which would allow them to increase the scale of their operations based on a more cost-efficient business model.
Batoka Gorge Hydroelectric Scheme: A Macroeconomic Assessment of Public Investment Options

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-01) World Bank

Maximizing the benefits from public sector investments requires a clear, predictable, and transparent process informed by robust analyses that can facilitate multicriteria considerations of different options and alternatives. However, the tools available to governments to assess the costs and benefits of different investment strategies are often too general or specific to determine the optimal investment strategy. This paper aims to improve the tools available to facilitate the assessment of the macroeconomic implications of large infrastructure projects and enhance the capacity for management of public investment decisions. The macroeconomic assessment of public investment options (MAPIO) model was applied to the Batoka Gorge hydroelectric scheme to provide an analysis of impacts on key macroeconomic variables. The MAPIO model shows the project provides a robust financial and economic investment option with a net positive impact on the national economies in both Zambia and Zimbabwe. The estimates are considered conservative and the returns remain robust when subjecting the model to extreme assumptions to test the sensitivity of the results. However, it is important to acknowledge the model limitations, which does not include noneconomic benefits, costs, or impacts on other sectors. Any investment decision should involve a multicriteria assessment that considers the full range of options and alternatives that may be available to achieving the development objectives.
Assessment of Groundwater Challenges and Opportunities in Support of Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-08-01) World Bank Group

The report confirms that groundwater, if managed sustainably, can be an important development resource across the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region. The report presents data related to groundwater resource characteristics and highlights the opportunities and challenges presented in promoting sustainable and resilient groundwater development in the region. Groundwater has significant potential to support human and economic development in SSA, as it has done in other global regions. The report recommends investment in expanding groundwater development as an integral component of national water resources strategy for countries in SSA. Investment in groundwater can be financially viable and a wise policy option to support socioeconomic development if safeguards specific to groundwater are incorporated into investmentprograms. The expansion should be designed within a sustainable framework responsive to thespecial social and cultural and economic features of groundwater resources, compounded bytheir special hydrological, environmental and engineering dimensions to guide sustainabledevelopment of this important component of water resources.
Economywide and Distributional Impacts of Water Resources Development in the Coast Region of Kenya: Implications for Water Policy and Operations

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05) Beyene, Lulit ; Namara, Regassa ; Sahoo, Amar ; Shiferaw, Bekele ; Maisonnave, Helene ; Saltiel, Gustavo

A water-focused computable general equilibrium and microsimulation models were applied to analyze the economywide and distributional impacts of the multipurpose Mwache dam investment in the coast region of Kenya. The results show that the dam is likely to contribute to the regional economic growth with highest results under the combined allocation scenario of 80 percent for domestic users and nonagricultural economic sectors and 20 percent for irrigation purposes. In the coast region, water allocation to agriculture is key for inclusive growth and poverty reduction. With irrigation water, increased production of maize, pulses, oil crops, fruits, and vegetables in the hitherto drought-prone region fuels agricultural productivity growth that benefits the regional and national economies. Thus, allocation of water to irrigation can have considerable effects on food availability and food and nutritional security in the region, which suffers from persistent food deficits. Provision of domestic water supply is necessary but not sufficient for overcoming extreme poverty. Increased water availability benefits all industries operating in the coast region, in particular, those relatively more intensive in water.
Reviewing National Sanitation to Reach Sustainable Development Goals

(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-05) Gibson, Jim ; Eales, Kathy ; Nsubuga-Mugga, Chris

The government of Uganda has given strong emphasis to eradicating open defecation and to encouraging people to invest in safe containment systems. Funding to local governments is spurring sanitation improvement on a significant scale. But as the pace of urbanization picks up in the country and the scale and density of urban settlements rise, local authorities and the ministries that support and service these areas will need to give greater attention to safe management of wastes beyond the on-site facilities of individual users. The SDGs shift the sanitation sector’s targets beyond a measurement of how many people have access to an adequate toilet and define outcomes in terms of safe management of human wastes across the whole service chain. It is only by understanding and managing the processes associated with each component in the chain, and ensuring they link and align with the preceding and subsequent components, that one can begin to define strategic interventions to improve the performance of the system. Developing insight into the nature of these processes and related activities will help to clarify the responsibilities, functions, and possibility for intervention by the various role-players and ministries in the sector as they strive for the realization of the objectives defined by the Sustainable Development Goals