Sustainable Transformation of Urban Water Infrastructure in Amman, Jordan – Meeting Residential Water Demand in the Face of Deficient Public Supply and Alternative Private Water Markets

Klassert, Christian; Gawel, Erik; Sigel, Katja; Klauer, Bernd

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-59324-1_6

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Regardless of the range of potential explanations (cf. Appendix A, Note 23), the low commercial connectivity has negative financial implications for the water system as a whole due to the cross-subsidizing role of commercial consumers, as argued by Klassert and colleagues [37].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Commercial Tanker Water Demand in Amman, Jordan—A Spatial Simulation Model of Water Consumption Decisions under Intermittent Network Supply

Zozmann

Klassert

Sigel

et al. 2019

Water

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The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is confronted with a severe freshwater crisis shaped by excess water demand and intermittent public supply. In Jordan’s capital and most populous city, Amman, the pervasive water shortage gave rise to private tanker water operations, which transport groundwater from wells in the vicinity of the city and sell it to urban consumers. These tanker water markets have received little attention in the literature up to date, particularly with regard to their relevance for commercial water users. This paper aims to empirically estimate the water demand of commercial establishments in Amman under public supply rationing and to assess to which extent tanker operations contribute to meeting commercial water needs. Building on a prior simulation model of residential water consumption, the results of three extensive surveys concerned with tanker water markets and various geographic data, we develop a spatial agent-based model of the water consumption behavior of commercial establishments in different sizes. According to our estimation, 35–45% of the overall water volume consumed by the commercial sector stems from tanker operations, depending on the season. We find that the local disparities in access to affordable network water, along with the dispersion of groundwater wells around the city, result in considerable spatial differences in tanker water consumption. The outcome of this analysis could be relevant for policy attempting to enhance freshwater sustainability in Jordan.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Commercial Tanker Water Demand in Amman, Jordan—A Spatial Simulation Model of Water Consumption Decisions under Intermittent Network Supply

Zozmann

Klassert

Sigel

et al. 2019

Water

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“…Public water providers in the country introduced intermittency in 1987 to ration water and reduce losses due to leaks (Potter & Darmame, 2010). The resulting supply interruptions make public water supply in the country unreliable and unequal, with major impacts on citizens' water security (Klassert et al., 2018). To cope with these public water supply deficits, households and firms in Jordan use storage tanks (Rosenberg et al., 2008) and rely heavily on expensive water deliveries from privately operated tanker trucks (Klassert et al., 2023).…”

Section: Study Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unequal, Unreliable, and Unfixable?—The Need to Investigate Water Infrastructure Improvements in Intermittent Supply Systems

Klassert

2023

Water Resources Research

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Infrastructure deterioration threatens urban water security and the pursuit of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6, “water for all”). One billion urban residents worldwide already face intermittent piped water access, making their public water supply unreliable and unequal. Thus, effective investments in water infrastructure improvements are critical. In a recent WRR paper, Jeuland et al. (2023, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022WR033897) evaluate the impacts of a large infrastructure improvement project on various water security metrics and assess the challenges of such an investigation. They apply a rigorous difference‐in‐difference approach to data from a US$275 million investment in upgrades to water supply and sewage networks in the Zarqa governorate in arid Jordan, analyzing its effects on households, businesses, farms, and the water utility. The authors find a range of moderate improvements to water access and re‐use metrics, including a significant reduction in reported shortages. Key water security indicators related to access intermittency, however, such as the supply duration per day and the expenditure on water deliveries by tanker trucks, saw little to no improvement. The findings reveal that the efforts required to overcome the insecurity and inequity of intermittent public water supply systems might be considerably larger than expected. This suggests an urgent need to further enhance both the accuracy of impact evaluation methods and the effectiveness of infrastructure investments to support the pursuit of SDG 6.

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“…This evidence is timely because one of the Jordanian government's major current objectives, supported by numerous policy reforms and changes in the water sector but few causal IEs, is to improve urban water security (Royal Commission for Water, 2009). Various reforms are occurring in a complicated political economy context that constrains the use of price instruments, owing to widespread popular opposition to higher water bills (Klassert et al., 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact Evaluation of Water Infrastructure Investments: Methods, Challenges and Demonstration From a Large‐Scale Urban Improvement in Jordan

Jeuland

Orgill‐Meyer

Morgan

et al. 2023

Water Resources Research

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As global population and consumption of water rise, concerns that humankind is entering a new age of global water scarcity are increasingly widespread (Liu et al., 2017). To some, this rising water scarcity is worrisome because water is uniquely essential for myriad purposes-drinking and critical domestic uses, as an input to food and industrial production, and for general human and ecological well-being (Hanemann, 2006). Some predict that water's essentialness will inevitably lead to a zero sum game and loss of livelihoods for specific users, widespread social destabilization, and environmental damage (Joy et al., 2020;Postel, 2000). Such warnings are perhaps most commonly heard in countries or regions where water scarcity is becoming a binding constraint, for example, the Middle East, Western United States, parts of Australia, and in river basins with intense water competition (e.g., the upstream Ganges, Nile, Mekong, or Tigris-Euphrates). Indeed, much of the globe already experiences acute economic water scarcity, due to a lack of high quality infrastructure and an inability of institutions to consistently provide the resource to end users (Rijsberman, 2006). However, both institutional and infrastructure solutions, when designed and operated effectively, can dramatically improve water management, and thereby ease tensions.At the same time, the effects of both water infrastructure and management interventions often vary, and need to be understood within their particular contexts. Learning which interventions work, and under what conditions, is vitally important, both for the very practical work of informing subsequent context-specific interventions, and for applying broader lessons about drivers and impediments of key mechanisms of change to other contexts. Still, the methods to learn about impacts and mechanisms in the water sector-particularly the science of impact evaluation (IE) as applied to water and sanitation projects-remain imperfect. In short, the fundamental challenge facing researchers working on such IEs is to isolate causal effects of infrastructure from the many other contemporaneous changes that affect water supply and sanitation services, water resources systems, and human welfare and well-being. In addition, as we discuss in this paper, the typical "gold standard" methodology for determining causal impacts, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) (

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Sustainable Transformation of Urban Water Infrastructure in Amman, Jordan – Meeting Residential Water Demand in the Face of Deficient Public Supply and Alternative Private Water Markets

Cited by 8 publications

References 27 publications

Commercial Tanker Water Demand in Amman, Jordan—A Spatial Simulation Model of Water Consumption Decisions under Intermittent Network Supply

Commercial Tanker Water Demand in Amman, Jordan—A Spatial Simulation Model of Water Consumption Decisions under Intermittent Network Supply

Unequal, Unreliable, and Unfixable?—The Need to Investigate Water Infrastructure Improvements in Intermittent Supply Systems

Impact Evaluation of Water Infrastructure Investments: Methods, Challenges and Demonstration From a Large‐Scale Urban Improvement in Jordan

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