Conclusion
The World Bank, with assistance from organizations in the United
Nations, and after intensive consultation with its borrowers and with
international and developing-country nongovernmental organizations, has adopted
a new policy for water resources management that takes a comprehensive approach,
emphasizing economic behavior, the overcoming of market and policy failures,
more efficient use of water, and greater protection of the environment (box 11).
It is working actively with its developing-country partners to encourage
implementation of these objectives. In Brazil, the Bank is financing water
quality and pollution control projects that create basin authorities and
institutional, legal, and regulatory frameworks that facilitate crosssectoral
and cross-governmental coordination, while delegating many responsibilities to
municipalities. In Bangladesh, the Bank has supported the creation of an
enabling environment that allows the private sector to take responsibility for
selling and maintaining low-lift pumps and shallow tubewells. The number of
tubewells has grown substantially, with a subsequent increase in market activity
for water. In Pakistan, the Bank is helping to develop a delivery mechanism
whereby rural communities will provide, operate, and maintain the service
themselves. And in
|
Box 11. How the World Bank Promotes a Comprehensive
Framework
As described in its policy paper Water: Resources Management
(1993a), the Bank is giving priority to countries with significant water
management problems. It is encouraging and helping countries to develop a
systematic framework for incorporating cross-sectoral and ecosystem
interdependencies into the formulation of policies, regulations, and public
investment plans that are appropriate to the particular country's situation. The
framework fosters transparent decisions and emphasizes demand management. It is
designed so that the options for public water management in a river basin or
watershed can be evaluated and compared within a national water strategy and the
various economic, social, and environmental objectives that countries adopt. It
also enables coherent public investment plans to be formulated at the national
and basin level and consistent policies and regulations to be developed across
sectors. This allows individual projects to be simplified, thus enhancing their
likelihood of success. To facilitate the introduction of such a framework, the
Bank is ready to support capacity building by enhancing analytical capabilities,
adopting participatory techniques, and strengthening data bases, as well as by
conducting water resource assessments and promoting needed institutional
changes. |
In its operations, the Bank is promoting the creation and
strengthening of hydrologic, hydrogeologic, water quality, and environmental
data bases for both surface water and groundwater. It encourages the development
and use of adequate data bases regarding the various elements of the water
system. This information is an important input into a country's national water
strategy and environmental action plan To facilitate the collection of data, the
Bank supports the use of modern technologies for hydrologic and environmental
monitoring and for surveys and data processing, taking into account the relation
between the costs and benefits of more detailed information. Since improved
information systems are a key input for comprehensive water management, the Bank
is helping countries to develop systems that effectively use the data to monitor
current changes in water supply and demand, thereby improving decisionmaking.
Mexico, the Bank is supporting tile transfer of almost 2.5
million hectares of irrigated agriculture to water user associations that will
be responsible for operating and maintaining canals and distributing water.
As these examples demonstrate, efforts to implement a new
approach are feasible. The financial requirements, however, will be substantial.
For water supply and sanitation and irrigation and power, these are estimated to
be $600 billion to $800 billion during the next decade. The World Bank will
continue its extensive support for water resources. The Bank has already lent
$40 billion for water-related investments in the last thirty years. During the
next ten years, it will lend an additional $35 billion to $40 billion. This will
represent about half of all external agency funding for water. Developing
countries must finance the balance, but they will not be able to do so from
central budgets alone. Part of the capital will have to come from water users.
Therefore, as recommended in the new demand-side approach to water management,
emphasis on cost recovery and private sector involvement will be crucial.
After decades of waste, pollution, and inability to provide
basic water services to the poor, we must fundamentally change the way we think
about and manage water. The lessons of collective experience demonstrate that we
must make a decisive break from past policies to embrace a new approach that is
comprehensive, market-oriented, participatory, and environmentally sustainable.
This approach is consistent with the consensus that has emerged around Agenda
21, adopted at UNCED in 1992. Implementation of the new approach will require
difficult decisions on the part of all of us. But one fundamental point is
clear: we have no choice. At stake are our health, our economies, and the life
of the planet
itself.
