Valuing water for sustainable development

Abstract

Achieving universal, safely managed water and sanitation services by 2030, as envisioned by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, is projected to require capital expenditures of USD 114 billion per year (1). Investment on that scale, along with accompanying policy reforms, can be motivated by a growing appreciation of the value of water. Yet our ability to value water, and incorporate these values into water governance, is inadequate. Newly recognized cascading negative impacts of water scarcity, pollution, and flooding underscore the need to change the way we value water (2). With the UN/World Bank High Level Panel on Water having launched the Valuing Water Initiative in 2017 to chart principles and pathways for valuing water, we see a global opportunity to rethink the value of water. We outline four steps toward better valuation and management (see the box), examine recent advances in each of these areas, and argue that these four steps must be integrated to overcome the barriers that have stymied past efforts

Subnational regional inequality in access to improved drinking water and sanitation in Indonesia: results from the 2015 Indonesian National Socioeconomic Survey (SUSENAS)

“…In response to the data requirements for SDG monitoring, new questions and modules have been developed for inclusion in household surveys [14]; however, information on the quality of drinking water and sanitation services can more appropriately be obtained from government authorities that have regulatory oversight of service providers, and a mandate to monitor and value water resources and services [15]. …”

Challenges in assessing the regional feasibility of local water storage

“…The seventh challenge is that the costs and benefits of local storage, and water in general, are diverse and hard to quantify (Pandey, Soupir, Singh, Panda, & Pandey, 2011;Savenije & Van der Zaag, 2002;WOCAT, 2007). Water can have cultural, environmental, religious and social benefits, of which the perception is personal (Davidson, Hellegers, & Samad, 2009;Garrick et al, 2017). Also, the costs and benefits of extra water to irrigate crops may differ by year and season, due to variations in commodity prices, usage, rainfall and quality, to name just a few (Turner et al, 2004).…”

Trade-Offs between Human and Environment: Challenges for Regional Water Management under Changing Conditions

“…Such activities have also directly introduced pollution to freshwater resources and degraded ecosystems [11][12][13][14]. In particular, human viewpoints towards overexploitation of water resources to "make money from every drop" have considerably influenced water and land management decisions to favor economic growth, without leaving much high-quality water for the downstream environments [15][16][17][18][19]. This disruption in natural environments, in turn, has caused irreversible consequences for both human and ecosystem in various regions since last century [20,21].…”