Water Papers
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2030 Water Resources Group Offering: Advancing Global Water Security through Public-Private Collaboration
Water Resources Group (WRG) catalyzes collaboration between the private sector and government to tackle water security challenges and climate change impacts. Its engagements center on four steps: framing choices to support effective decision-making, facilitating country platforms, supporting implementation, and scaling solutions.
Do National Visions and Climate Commitments across Sub-Saharan Africa Hold Water?: Africa Region Water and Climate Policy Note
Water management is foundational for development and climate adaptation. Investments in water not only improve health and wealth of nations but can also buffer the impacts of climate change. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the most vulnerable region to climate change impacts. This policy note examines national development vision documents and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) documents across SSA to: (1) review the extent to which water and water related climate priorities feature in them; (2) propose substantive improvements to the presentation of water and water related climate priorities; and, (3) identify practical ways water sector actors can engage in shaping national planning documents going forward. The analysis shows that water and water-related climate actions are not consistently included in either national vision documents or NDCs across SSA. Most country’s vision documents (91 percent) aimed to improve access to water supply and sanitation (WSS) but only half of the visions aimed to expand irrigation and hydropower. Water resources management (WRM), though referenced in two thirds of the visions was poorly defined and only very few cases described institutional mechanisms for managing water. Water adaptation measures featured in all SSA countries’ NDCs but were often generic in nature without clear indicators or targets. For example, early warning systems (EWS) were included in over two thirds of NDCs but only a few countries were specific about when or how EWS would be set up. WRM measures in NDCs were even less specific than those included in national visions. Water related mitigation measures in NDCs were less frequently included than adaptation measures. For example, only a quarter of NDCs mentioned improving energy efficiency in WSS and only one country set a specific target to reduce energy intensity. As vision documents and NDCs get revised there is a window of opportunity to ensure that water and its subsectors (WSS, irrigation, hydropower and WRM) are presented with clear indicators and targets. Half of the countries in SSA will revise their visons in the 2020s and NDCs are revised every 5 years.
Water Matters: Resilient, Inclusive and Green Growth through Water Security in Latin America
Water security is a matter of increasing concern across the world and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is no exception. With rapidly growing demands for water and increasing variability due to climate change, ensuring water access to all users and mitigating water-related risks should be at the center of national and regional adaptation strategies. With nearly a third of the world's water resources, the LAC region's development has been inadvertently driven by water. This rich water endowment has allowed LAC to position itself as the world's largest net food-exporting region and greenest in terms of electricity production through hydropower. Water has played a fundamental role in reducing poverty, preserving LAC's natural wealth, and accelerating economic growth. More importantly, access to safe drinking water and sanitation services has contributed to improve the health and living conditions of millions of people. Despite this progress, there are urgent water sector challenges that threaten the region's sustainable development. Access to water and sanitation services is inequitable, with greater gaps in rural, indigenous, and peri-urban communities. In addition, water-related extremes such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent and severe, having negative effects in lower-income communities. These gaps are more likely to be broadened by unsustainable water management practices, growing demands by competing water users, increasing pollution, and climate change impacts. In LAC, inadequate infrastructure results in a lack of storage and limited investment reduces the capacity of institutions to achieve integrated water resources management and improve service provision. The Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) conducts research, convenes multi stakeholder dialogues, builds institutional capacity, and provides policy advice to water decision-makers. Focused on improving water governance, the authors aim to contribute to more prosperous and inclusive societies.
Water in Circular Economy and Resilience: The Case of Dakar, Senegal
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.
Water Security and Climate Change: Insights from Country Climate and Development Reports
This report, "Water Security and Climate Change: Insights from Country Climate and Development Reports," examines the crucial role of water in addressing climate change, drawing insights from the World Bank's Country Climate and Development Reports (CCDRs). The report highlights the significant impacts of climate change on water resources, including increased droughts, floods, and sea level rise, that threaten agricultural production, human health, and economic growth. It emphasizes the importance of water sector actions for both climate mitigation and adaptation, including investments in water infrastructure, demand-side management, and nature-based solutions. The report also addresses the challenges of financing water sector investments, the need for private sector participation, and the importance of strong governance and policy frameworks. Finally, it provides recommendations for future CCDRs, including the need for more comprehensive assessments of investment needs, improved modeling approaches, and a stronger focus on the water-jobs nexus and transboundary water management.
Groundwater Quality: A Strategic Approach
This policy brief highlights the key messages for policy makers from the World Bank report “Seeing the Invisible: A Strategic Report on Groundwater Quality” (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022a). This report and “A Practical Manual on Groundwater Quality Monitoring” (Ravenscroft and Lytton 2022b) describe the types of contaminants in groundwater, tools and resources for their measurement and long-term monitoring, and techniques to protect the resource from being contaminated in the first place.
Troubled Tariffs: Revisiting Water Pricing for Affordable and Sustainable Water Services
Tariffs are essential but not the only pathway to cost recovery, addressing affordability, and managing water conservation. To maximize their potential, they must be well designed, complemented by appropriate instruments, adequately regulated, and understood by customers. This report builds upon that one, and provides policy makers with the information needed to design better tariffs to further the economic efficiency, affordability, and environmental sustainability of water supply services. Through a layered and comprehensive analysis of the most prevalent tariff structures, it provides policy makers with specific guidance on pricing water supply services in response to the sector’s often-competing goals. This document comprises a synthesis of fifteen unique research papers that, combined, articulate a step-by-step thought process for designing effective tariffs with a view to achieving sustainable development goal (SDG) 6.
Reviving Lake Victoria: A Regional Approach to Inclusive Sanitation
Lake Victoria, a vital resource for East African countries, faces threats from unsustainable land management, human waste, and industrial effluent, impacting its water quality, biodiversity, and navigability. Recognized as a regional economic zone by the East African Community, the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) requires aC coordinated regional approach to address these challenges. The Lakewide Inclusive Sanitation (LWIS) Strategy offers a multilateral solution to the basin's sanitation issues, exacerbated by rapid urbanization and inadequate wastewater treatment. With 33 million people in the LVB lacking improved sanitation, the LWIS Strategy aims to improve water quality and human capital through comprehensive sanitation improvements, technical innovation, institutional reforms, and financial mobilization. This approach also engages the private sector in innovation, service delivery, and job creation, emphasizing the need for a strong, coordinated regional effort to enhance lake functions, provide safe sanitation, and strengthen community resilience against climate change and other crises.
From Source to Sea: South Asia Water Initiative Completion Report 2013 - 2021
This Completion Report summarizes cumulative results and outcomes for the South Asia Water Initiative (SAWI) Phase 2 (from 2013-2021). SAWI’s objective was to increase regional cooperation in the management of the major Himalayan river systems in South Asia to deliver sustainable, fair, and inclusive development and climate resilience. Four interlinked pathways supported the outcomes: (i) building confidence and trust among the countries – mainly by convening regional technical dialogues; (ii) generating new technical knowledge, including in partnership with others, for national programs to use and to help shift stakeholder perceptions; (iii) building capacity of key institutions and stakeholders by exposing them to regional collaboration efforts elsewhere and training them in the use of new tools and technologies to strengthen water resource management; and (iv) scoping and leveraging investments, most notably World Bank investments so that these new approaches could be embedded and taken to scale.
Water in Circular Economy and Resilience
Rethinking urban water through the circular economy and resilience lenses offers an opportunity to transform the urban water sector and deliver water supply and sanitation services in a more sustainable, inclusive, efficient, and resilient way. Circular Economy principles have emerged as a response to the current unsustainable linear model of "take, make, consume, and waste." In a circular economy, the full value of water – as a service, an input to processes, a source of energy and a carrier of nutrients and other materials – is recognized and captured. This report presents the Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) Framework together with global case studies that show the benefits of becoming circular and resilient. It describes the key actions needed to achieve three main outcomes: 1) deliver resilient and inclusive services, 2) design out waste and pollution, and 3) preserve and regenerate natural systems. The report sets out to demystify circular economy by showing that both high-income and low-income countries can benefit from it.