Sadoff, Claudia W.

Person:
Sadoff, Claudia W.

Global Practice on Water

Fields of Specialization

Water Security, Water Resources Management

ORCID

0000-0002-7354-563X

Departments

Global Practice on Water

Last updated: January 31, 2023

Biography

Dr. Claudia Sadoff is the World Bank’s Global Lead for Water Security and Integrated Resource Management, and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Oxford University. At the World Bank she has led the South Asia Water Initiative and the global Water Resources Team, and coordinated the World Bank Nile Team. She has also served as Chair of the GWP/OECD Task Force on Water Security and Sustainable Growth, Senior Advisor to IWMI, Economic Advisor to IUCN, and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security and the GWP Technical Committee. She holds a PhD in Economics.

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Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10

Turbulent Waters: Pursuing Water Security in Fragile Contexts
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-03-14) Sadoff, Claudia W.; Borgomeo, Edoardo; de Waal, Dominick
Water insecurity—ranging from chronic water scarcity to lack of access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, to hydrological uncertainty and extremes (floods and droughts)—can cause severe disruptions and compound fragilities in social, economic, and environmental systems. Untangling the role of water insecurity in contributing to fragility is difficult, yet it is becoming a fundamental question for water policy worldwide given the scale of the fragility challenge. This report explores the dynamics between water insecurity and fragility. It suggests that water security is more difficult to achieve in fragile contexts because of a range of factors, including weak institutions and information systems, strained human and financial resources, and degraded infrastructure. This report focuses on three main mechanisms by which water insecurity and fragility interact: (1) failure to provide citizens with basic water services; (2) failure to protect citizens from water-related disasters; and (3) failure to preserve surface, ground and transboundary water resources.
Effective Cooperation on Transboundary Waters: A Practical Perspective
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Grey, David; Sadoff, Claudia; Connors, Genevieve
Building effective cooperation on transboundary waters is always a lengthy and complex journey. Embracing cooperation is no simple task for a nation state, not least because of the perceived costs of the erosion of sovereignty, however small that erosion might be. While there are many examples of where cooperation is non-existent or weak, there are also examples – across countries and across time – of effective cooperation. This essay examines these issues through a practitioner’s lens to draw a few lessons from experience on why countries cooperate and how cooperation can be achieved.
Beyond the River: A Practitioner Perspective
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-01) Grey, David; Sadoff, Claudia; Connors, Genevieve
Building real cooperation on transboundary waters is always a lengthy and complex journey. Embracing cooperation is no simple task for a nation state, not least because of the perceived costs of the erosion of sovereignty, however small that erosion might be. While there are many examples of where cooperation is non-existent or weak, there are also examples of robust cooperation. This essay examines these questions through a practitioner’s lens to draw a few lessons from experience on why countries cooperate and how cooperation can be achieved.
Implications of Climate Change for Water Resources Development in the Ganges Basin
(IWA Publishing, 2013-03) Jeuland, Marc; Harshadeep, Nagaraja; Escurra, Jorge; Blackmore, Don; Sadoff, Claudia
This paper presents the first basin-wide assessment of the potential impact of climate change on the hydrology and production of the Ganges system, undertaken as part of the World Bank’s Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment. A series of modeling efforts, downscaling of climate projections, water balance calculations, hydrological simulation and economic optimization, inform the assessment. The authors find that projections of precipitation across the basin, obtained from 16 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-recognized General Circulation Models are highly variable, and lead to considerable differences in predictions of mean flows in the main stem of the Ganges and its tributaries. Despite uncertainties in predicted future flows, they are not, however, outside the range of natural variability in this basin, except perhaps at the tributary or sub-catchment levels. The authors also find that the hydropower potential associated with a set of 23 large dams in Nepal remains high across climate models, largely because annual flow in the tributary rivers greatly exceeds the storage capacities of these projects even in dry scenarios. The additional storage and smoothing of flows provided by these infrastructures translates into enhanced water availability in the dry season, but the relative value of this water for the purposes of irrigation in the Gangetic plain, and for low flow augmentation to Bangladesh under climate change, is unclear.
Interdependence in Water Resource Development in the Ganges: An Economic Analysis
(IWA Publishing, 2013-03) Wu, Xun; Jeuland, Marc; Sadoff, Claudia; Whittington, Dale
It is often argued that the true benefits of water resource development in international river basins are undermined by a lack of consideration of interdependence in water resource planning. Yet it has not been adequately recognized in the water resources planning literature that overestimation of interdependence may also contribute to lack of progress in cooperation in many systems. This paper examines the nature and degree of economic interdependence in new and existing water storage projects in the Ganges River basin based on analysis conducted using the Ganges Economic Optimization Model. We find that constructing large dams on the upstream tributaries of the Ganges would have much more limited effects on controlling downstream floods than is thought and that the benefits of low-flow augmentation delivered by storage infrastructures are currently low. A better understanding of actual and prospective effects of interdependence not only changes the calculus of the benefits and costs of different scenarios of infrastructure development, but might also allow riparian countries to move closer to benefit sharing positions that are mutually acceptable.
Ten Fundamental Questions for Water Resources Development in the Ganges: Myths and Realities
(IWA Publishing, 2013-03) Harshadeep, Nagaraja Rao; Sadoff, Claudia; Blackmore, Donald J.; Wu, Xun; O'Donnell, Anna; Jeuland, Marc; Lee, Sylvia; Whittington, Dale
This paper summarizes the results of the Ganges Strategic Basin Assessment (SBA), a 3-year, multi-disciplinary effort undertaken by a World Bank team in cooperation with several leading regional research institutions in South Asia. It begins to fill a crucial knowledge gap, providing an initial integrated systems perspective on the major water resources planning issues facing the Ganges basin today, including some of the most important infrastructure options that have been proposed for future development. The SBA developed a set of hydrological and economic models for the Ganges system, using modern data sources and modeling techniques to assess the impact of existing and potential new hydraulic structures on flooding, hydropower, low flows, water quality and irrigation supplies at the basin scale. It also involved repeated exchanges with policymakers and opinion makers in the basin, during which perceptions of the basin could be discussed and examined. The study’s findings highlight the scale and complexity of the Ganges basin. In particular, they refute the broadly held view that upstream water storage, such as reservoirs in Nepal, can fully control basin wide flooding. In addition, the findings suggest that such dams could potentially double low flows in the dry months. The value of doing so, however, is surprisingly unclear and similar storage volumes could likely be attained through better groundwater management. Hydropower development and trade are confirmed to hold real promise (subject to rigorous project level assessment with particular attention to sediment and seismic risks) and, in the near to medium term, create few significant tradeoffs among competing water uses. Significant uncertainties, including climate change, persist, and better data would allow the models and their results to be further refined.
Managing Water Resources to Maximize Sustainable Growth : A World Bank Water Resources Assistance Strategy for Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-06) Sadoff, Claudia
This note contains a summary, for practitioners, of the World Bank Country Water Resources Assistance Strategy (CWRAS) report: it concerns managing water resources to maximize sustainable growth and focuses on World Bank water resources assistance strategy for Ethiopia (March 2006). Specifically, the note describes the scope and scale of the impacts of hydrological variability on Ethiopia's economic performance, poverty, natural resources, and socioeconomic conditions, and outlines the Bank's strategic approach to assisting water-related sectors in Ethiopia within an overall development strategy for the country.
Can Water Undermine Growth? Evidence from Ethiopia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2006-09) Sadoff, Claudia
In Ethiopia the centrality of water is clear. With little water resources infrastructure, relatively weak management institutions and capacity, extreme hydrological variability and seasonality, and a highly vulnerable economy, Ethiopia faces an enormous challenge in building the minimum platform of water infrastructure and management capacity needed to achieve water security. But until water security is achieved, growth will continue to be severely constrained. A World Bank study (World Bank 2006) estimated the magnitude of the impacts of high water variability on growth and poverty so that the government can better manage water and manage other parts of the economy (trade, transport) to reduce the impacts of water shocks. The study found that considering the effects of water variability reduced projected rates of economic growth by 38% per year and increased projected poverty rates by 25% over a twelve year period. Furthermore, the variability of rainfall increased value-added of water investments, such as irrigation, that reduce vulnerability to rainfall. The study also found that transport infrastructure played a major role in the inability of local economies to adjust to localized crop failures, as it allows areas with food surpluses to sell to areas in food deficit. This analysis, undertaken in cooperation with the Ethiopian government, helped to make the issue of water resource management a central focus of the government's national poverty reduction strategy.
Africa's International Rivers : An Economic Perspective
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2002) Whittington, Dale; Sadoff, Claudia W.; Grey, David
Cooperative management, and development of Africa's international rivers holds real promise for greater sustainability, and productivity of the continent's increasingly scarce water resources, and fragile environment. Moreover, the potential benefits of cooperative water resources management, can serve as catalysts for broader regional cooperation, economic integration, and development - and even conflict prevention. But riparians will pursue joint action only when they expect to receive greater benefits through cooperation than through unilateral action. Economic analysis can be used to make the case for cooperation on international rivers, using tools that will help identify, and measure the potential incremental benefits of cooperation, determine the distribution of benefits among riparians, and assess the feasibility, and fairness of alternative management, and investment scenarios. Where such schemes yield benefit distributions, not perceived as equitable among riparians, economic tools could also be used to calculate, design, and implement arrangements for redistribution. In all of these ways, economics can play an important role in enabling the management of international rivers, helping to motivate, design, and implement cooperative water resources management.
The Challenge of Improving Water and Sanitation Services in Less Developed Countries
(2008) Whittington, Dale; Hanemann, W. Michael; Sadoff, Claudia; Jeuland, Marc
This paper argues that there are many challenges to designing and implementing water and sanitation interventions that actually deliver economic benefits to the households in developing countries. Perhaps most critical to successful water and sanitation investments is to discover and implement forms of service and payment mechanisms that will render the improvements worthwhile for those who must pay for them. In this paper, we argue that, in many cases, the conventional network technologies of water supply and sanitation will fail this test, and that poor households need alternative, non-network technologies. However, it will not necessarily be the case that specific non-network improved water supply and/or sanitation technologies will always be seen as worthwhile by those who must pay for them. We argue that there is no easy panacea to resolve this situation. For any intervention, the outcome is likely to be context-dependent. An intervention that works well in one locality may fail miserably in another. For any given technology, the outcome will depend on economic and social conditions, including how it is implemented, by whom, and often on the extent to which complementary behavioral, institutional and organizational changes also occur. For this reason, we warn against excessive generalization: one cannot, in our view, say that one intervention yields a rate of return of x% while another yields a return of y%, because the economic returns are likely to vary with local circumstances. More important is to identify the circumstances under which an intervention is more or less likely to succeed. Also for this reason, when we analyze a few selected water and sanitation interventions, we employ a probabilistic rather than a deterministic analysis to emphasize that real world outcomes are likely to vary substantially.