Publication: Scaling Water Reuse: A Tipping Point for Municipal and Industrial Use
Loading...
Date
2025-06-11
ISSN
Published
2025-06-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This report advocates for scaling up investments in the treatment of used water to transform it into ‘new’ water suitable for municipal and industrial use. It presents a compelling business case and outlines actionable roadmaps for governments and the private sector to transition toward sustainable water use. These investments are essential for ensuring inclusive water service delivery, job creation, and economic development. The report emphasizes the public sector’s role in shaping markets to attract private sector participation - as users, solution providers, and financiers by setting and enforcing water-related regulations, designing financial incentives, and investing in infrastructure. It highlights the importance of creating enabling environments through market design, pricing strategies, and regulatory frameworks that support the development of a robust ‘new’ water economy. The document also underscores the need for collaboration between public and private sectors, and where appropriate, the World Bank Group, to drive this transformation. A central focus is on generating ‘new’ water for municipal systems and industrial users, which can significantly enhance water security, reduce environmental impact, and support sustainable development. By turning wastewater into a valuable resource, the report envisions a future where water reuse becomes a cornerstone of resilient and inclusive urban and industrial growth.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Khemka, Rochi; Eberhard, Rolfe. 2025. Scaling Water Reuse: A Tipping Point for Municipal and Industrial Use. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43326 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Evaluation of Small-Scale Providers of Water Supply and Sanitation Services in Peru(Washington, DC, 2007-06)The Water and Sanitation Program (WSP), administered by the World Bank, helps countries find sustainable solutions to ensure efficient delivery of the quality water supply and sanitation services the population demands. The WSP is carrying out a systematic analysis in several countries to identify the role of small-scale providers (SSP) of water and sanitation services to poor populations not served by public and private entities. The study also examines how these operators fit in and respond to sector policies and the organization of the sector in each country. The objective of this study is to identify the reasons for the existence of small-scale providers of water SSP in Peru and to evaluate the experience of these operators, with an emphasis on their coverage, service quality, costs and sustainability. The evaluation also includes proposals to improve service to the market traditionally served by SSP. The study was divided into three phases: (a) a sector assessment to determine why sector policies and financial and institutional resources have not produced service provision to the entire population, particularly to the segments served by SSP; (b) surveys in 14 communities with SSP and an analysis of responses to questions pertaining to legal, technical, market and financial aspects, as well as consumers' perceptions; and (c) sector policy recommendations with respect to SSP, and suggestions for priority projects to support better service delivery.Publication Sustainable and Smart Cities(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-05)This paper explores the challenges and opportunities that government officials face in designing coherent 'rules of the game' for achieving urban sustainability during times of growth. Sustainability is judged by three criteria. The first involves elements of day-to-day quality of life, such as having clean air and water and green space. The provision of these public goods has direct effects on the urban public's health and productivity. The second focuses on the city's greenhouse gas emissions. Developing cities are investing in new infrastructure, from highways and public transit systems to electricity generation and transmission. They are building water treatment, water delivery, and sewage disposal systems. Residents of these cities are simultaneously making key decisions about where they live and work and whether to buy such energy-consuming durables as private vehicles and home air-conditioning units. Given the long-lived durability of the capital stock, short-term decisions will have long-term effects on the city's carbon footprint. The third criterion is a city's resilience to natural disasters and extreme weather events. This subsection focuses on how the urban poor can be better equipped to adapt to the anticipated challenges of climate change.Publication Financing Small Piped Water Systems in Rural and Peri-Urban Kenya(Washington, DC, 2011-09)In Kenya, community run small-scale water systems play a critical role in supplying and improving access to water services in peri-urban and rural areas. This is largely because municipally-owned water services providers currently supply only 25 per cent of the country's population and 39 per cent of the population within their service areas. Historically, under a centralized institutional structure, a large number of communities were tasked with managing and recovering the operating costs of small piped water supply systems installed by government. The importance of these community providers has been recognized in recent reforms of the sector. These provide for a legal and regulatory framework for community based organizations to engage in water service provision outside major towns and cities. However, a host of problems complicate efforts to support these community organizations to become reliable service providers, including their limited management capacity, low operating revenues and lack of access to finance. Efforts to license and regulate the operations of community water projects have been hampered by the slow implementation of policies aimed at decentralizing water service delivery to communities in areas not covered by municipal water services providers. In spite of considerable liquidity within the Kenyan financial sector, domestic banks do not typically finance investments in water infrastructure because of the long term nature of infrastructure finance and the perceived lack of creditworthiness of rural and peri-urban small scale water providers. Efforts to license and regulate the operations of community water projects (CWPs) have been hampered by the slow implementation of policies aimed at decentralizing water service delivery to communities in areas not covered by municipal water services providers. With the considerable public financial resources available in the water sector, the size of the market for a loan linked product is likely to be limited over the medium term. However, public funds are not sufficient to build the infrastructure required to effectively meet the demand for water services: hence the increasing focus on cost recovery tariffs and the considerable initiatives underway to access supplementary financial resources from the private sector.Publication Downstream Impacts of Water Pollution in the Upper Citarum River, West Java, Indonesia : Economic Assessment of Interventions to Improve Water Quality(Asian Development Bank, Manila and World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-10)The Economics of Sanitation Initiative (ESI) of the World Bank's Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) commenced in East Asia and the Pacific region in 2006 to generate and disseminate economic evidence on sanitation. A phase one study in five countries of the region, including Indonesia, assessed the economic costs of inadequate sanitation to raise the profile of sanitation nationally. A phase two study compared the costs with the benefits of a range of sanitation intervention options in five physical locations in Indonesia, to assist decision makers in their choice of sanitation technology and delivery method. Since the demonstrated successes of ESI in the East Asia and Pacific region, ESI has become a global flagship program of WSP. However, some economic benefits have not been fully evaluated in monetary terms because of methodological difficulties in valuing nonmarket impacts, the paucity of underlying data sets, and the difficulties inherent in attributing observed impacts to poor sanitation. Among these hard-to-measure benefits are the impacts of poor sanitation on water resources. Hence, the purpose of this study was to develop and pilot test a specific methodology for valuing a wider range of impacts related to water resource pollution in Indonesia.Publication Addressing China's Water Scarcity : Recommendations for Selected Water Resource Management Issues(World Bank, 2009)This report reviews China's water scarcity situation, assesses the policy and institutional requirements for addressing it, and recommends key areas for strengthening and reform. It is a synthesis of the main findings and recommendations from analytical work and case studies prepared under the World Bank Analytical and Advisory Assistance (AAA) program entitled 'Addressing China's Water Scarcity: from Analysis to Action.' These studies focus on several strategically important thematic areas for China where additional research was needed, as identified by the research team and advisory group based on a review of pressing issues. These areas are governance, water rights, pricing, ecological compensation, pollution control, and emergency response. The approach has been to evaluate Chinese and international experience to identify policy and institutional factors that have proven effective in promoting the adoption of water conservation and pollution reduction technologies. The research was based on literature reviews, qualitative and quantitative policy analyses, household surveys, field trips, and case studies to develop feasible recommendations for a plan of action based on realities on the ground.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Bank Annual Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-25)This annual report, which covers the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, has been prepared by the Executive Directors of both the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA)—collectively known as the World Bank—in accordance with the respective bylaws of the two institutions. Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group and Chairman of the Board of Executive Directors, has submitted this report, together with the accompanying administrative budgets and audited financial statements, to the Board of Governors.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication World Development Report 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-08-01)Middle-income countries are in a race against time. Many of them have done well since the 1990s to escape low-income levels and eradicate extreme poverty, leading to the perception that the last three decades have been great for development. But the ambition of the more than 100 economies with incomes per capita between US$1,100 and US$14,000 is to reach high-income status within the next generation. When assessed against this goal, their record is discouraging. Since the 1970s, income per capita in the median middle-income country has stagnated at less than a tenth of the US level. With aging populations, growing protectionism, and escalating pressures to speed up the energy transition, today’s middle-income economies face ever more daunting odds. To become advanced economies despite the growing headwinds, they will have to make miracles. Drawing on the development experience and advances in economic analysis since the 1950s, World Development Report 2024 identifies pathways for developing economies to avoid the “middle-income trap.” It points to the need for not one but two transitions for those at the middle-income level: the first from investment to infusion and the second from infusion to innovation. Governments in lower-middle-income countries must drop the habit of repeating the same investment-driven strategies and work instead to infuse modern technologies and successful business processes from around the world into their economies. This requires reshaping large swaths of those economies into globally competitive suppliers of goods and services. Upper-middle-income countries that have mastered infusion can accelerate the shift to innovation—not just borrowing ideas from the global frontiers of technology but also beginning to push the frontiers outward. This requires restructuring enterprise, work, and energy use once again, with an even greater emphasis on economic freedom, social mobility, and political contestability. Neither transition is automatic. The handful of economies that made speedy transitions from middle- to high-income status have encouraged enterprise by disciplining powerful incumbents, developed talent by rewarding merit, and capitalized on crises to alter policies and institutions that no longer suit the purposes they were once designed to serve. Today’s middle-income countries will have to do the same.Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Global Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-10)The global economy is facing another substantial headwind, emanating largely from an increase in trade tensions and heightened global policy uncertainty. For emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), the ability to boost job creation and reduce extreme poverty has declined. Key downside risks include a further escalation of trade barriers and continued policy uncertainty. These challenges are exacerbated by subdued foreign direct investment into EMDEs. Global cooperation is needed to restore a more stable international trade environment and scale up support for vulnerable countries grappling with conflict, debt burdens, and climate change. Domestic policy action is also critical to contain inflation risks and strengthen fiscal resilience. To accelerate job creation and long-term growth, structural reforms must focus on raising institutional quality, attracting private investment, and strengthening human capital and labor markets. Countries in fragile and conflict situations face daunting development challenges that will require tailored domestic policy reforms and well-coordinated multilateral support.