Water Papers

183 items available

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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.

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    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.
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    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.
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    Evaluating the Potential of Container-Based Sanitation
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02-14) World Bank
    In the face of urbanization, alternative approaches are needed to deliver adequate and inclusive sanitation services across the full sanitation service chain. Container-based sanitation (CBS) consists of an end-to-end service—that is, one provided along the whole sanitation service chain—that collects excreta hygienically from toilets designed with sealable, removable containers and strives to ensure that the excreta is safely treated, disposed of, and reused. This report builds on four case studies (SOIL – Haiti, x-runner – Peru, Clean Team – Ghana, Sanergy – Kenya) to assess the role CBS can play in a portfolio of solutions for citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) services. The authors conclude that CBS approaches should be part of the CWIS portfolio of solutions, especially for poor urban populations for whom alternative on-site or sewer-based sanitation services might not be appropriate. Customer satisfaction with existing services is high and services provided by existing CBS providers are considered safe but have some areas for improvement. While the proportion of total CBS service costs covered by revenues is still small, CBS services are considered to be priced similarly to the main sanitation alternatives in their service areas. Recommendations include adopting a conducive policy and regulatory environment and exploring ways to ensure that CBS services are sustainably financed. The report also identifies areas for further analysis.
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    Lesotho WEAP Manual
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-02-08) World Bank
    This analysis looks specifically at the need to ensure continued development of water resources within Lesotho and aims to empower stakeholders to act with more confidence by demonstrating that the implementation strategies can provide benefits to water resources management over a broad range of possible future scenarios. The analysis quantifies a range of possible future conditions to demonstrate the benefits that can be realized over a broad range of possible future outcomes. This quantification is based on a water resource decision support model developed specifically for Lesotho, using the Water Evaluation and Planning (WEAP) model which couples climate, hydrologic, and water management systems to facilitate an evaluation of the uncertainties and strategies of impacts on specified management metrics. The WEAP model was used to simulate the historic climate based on data from the national government archives and global datasets available in the public domain. These included 121 downscaled Global Climate Model (GCM) projections of future climate over two possible water demand future scenarios, for a total of 244 scenarios up to the year 2050. The analysis concludes the following: (a)Climate change has important determinants for the future, long-term sustainable macroeconomic development of Lesotho: (b)Domestic and industrial water security is highly vulnerable under historical and current climate conditions, as well as under the full range of climate future scenarios; (c) Agriculture production will remain vulnerable to inter-annual variability over the coming decades, particularly with continued reliance on rain fed agriculture; and (d) The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) will continue to reliably meet transfers to South Africa over the coming decades unless climate conditions are about 5 percent drier or more than the historical record.