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Life cycle cost analysis of water supply infrastructure affected by low rainfall in Ethiopia
Abstract
This paper challenges the assumption that low cost CAPEX (capital expenditure) water supply infrastructure provides reduced life cycle costs when compared with higher cost CAPEX investments. The assumption is applied through a comparison of 10 years of financial data (2006–2016) from point source water supplies (accompanied by Emergency Expenditure – EMMEX investments – emergency water trucking, treatment and distribution) and piped water supply systems in two districts of the Ethiopian Central Highland region of Amhara. This study concluded that on average point source water supplies accessing shallow groundwater were non-functional for an average of 60 months in a project period of 10 years. To supplement the water supply demand during the non-functionality period, emergency water trucking and treatment was provided over a 10 year period at a per capita cost of USD 2,257. In comparison, the per capita cost of piped water supplies was USD 65 for a project period of 20 years. The study concluded that piped water supplies are less expensive than point source supplies when CAPEX and emergency water supply provision costs are considered under a life cycle cost analysis.
... Across sub-Saharan Africa, roughly 73% of people rely on point source water supplies, 47% on improved and 26% on unimproved sources (see Table 1 for distinction between improved and unimproved sources) 14 . However, there is evidence that some point source water technologies, such as springs and hand-dug wells, do not deliver reliable services during drought 8 , are vulnerable to contamination 8,15 , and have higher lifecycle costs than alternatives such as hand-pumped or motorised and piped systems 16 . The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) superseded the MDGs at the end of 2015 and are more ambitious (see Table 1 for distinction between SDG and MDG water targets), aiming to achieve (under Goal 6.1) Universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all. ...
... Rather, ongoing investment in operation and maintenance not only ensures that overall levels of functionality are higher in general, but also that life-cycle costs are lower, since the need for costly rehabilitation is less frequent 40 . Furthermore, targeted investment in operation and maintenance of technologies capable of accessing deep (>30 m) groundwater sources which are less likely to fail during drought, such as hand-pumps and motorised boreholes, will reduce life-cycle costs further by decreasing the need for investment in expensive emergency responses 16 . ...
As rural African communities experience more frequent and extreme droughts, it is increasingly important that water supplies are climate resilient. Using a unique temporal dataset we explore rural water supply (n = 5196) performance during the 2015–16 drought in Ethiopia. Mean functionality ranged from 60% for motorised boreholes to 75% for hand-pumped boreholes. Real-time monitoring and responsive operation and maintenance led to rapid increases in functionality of hand-pumped and, to a lesser extent, motorised boreholes. Increased demand was placed on motorised boreholes in lowland areas as springs, hand-dug-wells and open sources failed. Most users travelled >1 h to access motorised boreholes but <30 min, increasing to 30-60 mins, for hand-pumped boreholes. Boreholes accessing deep (>30 m) groundwater performed best during the drought. Prioritising access to groundwater via multiple improved sources and a portfolio of technologies, such as hand-pumped and motorised boreholes, supported by responsive and proactive operation and maintenance, increases rural water supply resilience. The authors compared the performance of a range of rural water supply types during drought in Ethiopia. They show that prioritising access to groundwater via multiple improved water sources and technologies, such as hand-pumped and motorised boreholes, supported by monitoring and proactive operation and maintenance increases rural water supply resilience.
... The appropriateness of deep groundwater investigation and development during periods of increased drought in Ethiopia has been demonstrated before. Investments in deeper groundwater prove to reduce the unit costs and improve the sustainability of water points [24][25][26][27]. Similarly, mapping of water points, year-round availability of water, and vulnerability towards droughts provide opportunities for monitoring and water service delivery in rural areas [28,29]. ...
... Considering that water points are mostly managed by WaSHCos, this may indicate that for improved water point functionality, more care is needed by the implementing agencies in handing over activities to the respective WaSHCos, to build capacity by enabling them to (better and sustainably) conduct water management activities after the finalization of projects [21]. This is supported by previous studies that found water systems managed by the community or semi-professionalized providers to not only be less costly, but also more sustainable [26]. ...
This study examines the patterns, trends, and factors associated with functional community water points in rural Ethiopia and identifies potential areas of improvement in terms of practitioner response to functionality and functionality monitoring. It was part of an integrated WaSH and nutrition program implemented by UNICEF Ethiopia and the Government of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted to collect WaSH-related data in communities and WaSH committees from four community-based nutrition (CBN) program groupings in Ethiopia. In all areas, CBN was implemented, but only in less than half of the areas, a WaSH intervention was implemented. Seventy-three representative kebeles, comprising 30 intervention and 43 control communities, were surveyed. Two structured surveys were conducted. The ‘community survey’ addressed community water points and their functionality and the main areas for improvement needed. The ‘WaSH committee survey’ investigated technical and management aspects of water points and their functionality. Data were analyzed using bivariate regression to identify community characteristics and management practices associated with functionality of water points and explore opportunities to improve water point functionality and monitoring. In the communities, 65% of water points were functional. Eighty percent of communities had a WaSH committee. The WaSH committee members reported that the most used water point types were protected dug wells and boreholes, and that 80% of their water points were functional. India Mark II pumps were more likely to be functional and communities with longer established WaSH committees had higher water point functionality. Communities suggested that the key factors for water point sustainability were improving water quality and water pressure, reducing water collection time, and speeding up repair times. Taking community leaders’ ‘priority lists’ into consideration offers sustainable opportunities for demand-driven, adaptive and targeted design and implementation of rural water supply programs, which, if they include the grassroots level as key informants and actors of change, can succeed. Interventions should integrate the ‘voice’ of the community, the WaSH committees, and other stakeholders and thereby facilitate transdisciplinary approaches at different stages of program management (planning, monitoring, and evaluation). This would help closing the knowledge to action gap and improve policy, programming, practice, and service delivery. View Full-Text
Keywords: community perceptions; drought; handpump; monitoring and evaluation; participation; rural water supply; seasonality; sustainability; transdisciplinarity; WaSH committee; WaSH intervention
... The appropriateness of deep groundwater investigation and development during periods of increased drought in Ethiopia has been demonstrated before. Investments in deeper groundwater prove to reduce the unit costs and improve the sustainability of water points [24][25][26][27]. Similarly, mapping of water points, year-round availability of water, and vulnerability towards droughts provide opportunities for monitoring and water service delivery in rural areas [28,29]. ...
... Considering that water points are mostly managed by WaSHCos, this may indicate that for improved water point functionality, more care is needed by the implementing agencies in handing over activities to the respective WaSHCos, to build capacity by enabling them to (better and sustainably) conduct water management activities after the finalization of projects [21]. This is supported by previous studies that found water systems managed by the community or semi-professionalized providers to not only be less costly, but also more sustainable [26]. ...
This study examines the patterns, trends, and factors associated with functional community water points in rural Ethiopia and identifies potential areas of improvement in terms of practitioner response to functionality and functionality monitoring. It was part of an integrated WaSH and nutrition program implemented by UNICEF Ethiopia and the Government of Ethiopia. Cross-sectional surveys were conducted to collect WaSH-related data in communities and WaSH committees from four community-based nutrition (CBN) program groupings in Ethiopia. In all areas, CBN was implemented, but only in less than half of the areas, a WaSH intervention was implemented. Seventy-three representative kebeles, comprising 30 intervention and 43 control communities, were surveyed. Two structured surveys were conducted. The 'community survey' addressed community water points and their functionality and the main areas for improvement needed. The 'WaSH committee survey' investigated technical and management aspects of water points and their functionality. Data were analyzed using bivariate regression to identify community characteristics and management practices associated with functionality of water points and explore opportunities to improve water point functionality and monitoring. In the communities, 65% of water points were functional. Eighty percent of communities had a WaSH committee. The WaSH committee members reported that the most used water point types were protected dug wells and boreholes, and that 80% of their water points were functional. India Mark II pumps were more likely to be functional and communities with longer established WaSH committees had higher water point functionality. Communities suggested that the key factors for water point sustainability were improving water quality and water pressure, reducing water collection time, and speeding up repair times. Taking community leaders' 'priority lists' into consideration offers sustainable opportunities for demand-driven, adaptive and targeted design and implementation of rural water supply programs, which, if they include the grassroots level as key informants and actors of change, can succeed. Interventions should integrate the 'voice' of the community, the WaSH committees, and other stakeholders and thereby facilitate transdisciplinary approaches at different stages of program management (planning, monitoring, and evaluation). This would help closing the knowledge to action gap and improve policy, programming, practice, and service delivery.
... The water security of the country during meteorological, hydrological (only surface water), and agricultural drought is highly dependent on groundwater availability, access to groundwater, and demand for groundwater (MacDonald et al. 2001); furthermore, Godfrey and Hailemichael (2017) and Thomas et al. (2019) indicated that groundwater is the only available water resource in drought-affected parts of the country. Hence, managing and developing groundwater is an essential option for the sustainable development of the country; however, studies about groundwater resource management related to drought propagation and characterization have not been conducted for the study area. ...
Drought is a temporal decrease in water availability and occurs in all climatic regions. Droughts propagate through the hydrological cycle, e.g., meteorological drought propagates to groundwater recharge drought. This research investigated drought propagation in the hydrological cycle in a semiarid context. Meteorological drought severity was determined using a standardized precipitation index (SPI). A variable threshold method and standardized groundwater index (SGI) was implemented to investigate groundwater recharge drought. Comparing meteorological drought (SPI) and groundwater drought (SGI) helps to assess drought propagation in the hydrological cycle. For drought analysis, time-series of rainfall and groundwater recharge needs to be available with high spatial and temporal resolution. Therefore, for this study, daily rainfall measurements were collected from 11 meteorological stations, and water balance modeling was used to estimate temporally and spatially distributed groundwater recharge. This research was carried out in the Bilate River catchment in the Rift Valley basin of Ethiopia. Results show that meteorological droughts were observed before every groundwater recharge drought and they propagate to groundwater recharge drought. Furthermore, analysis of the drought propagation indicates that not all meteorological droughts are propagated. The analysis also shows that a combination of mild to severe meteorological droughts can propagate to groundwater recharge and result in a major groundwater-recharge drought event.
... Historical drought support in the Horn of Africa has involved reactive response through emergency aid from international donors and multilateral organizations. However, proactive and preventive measures are estimated to save hundreds of millions of dollars when compared to emergency relief efforts (Venton, 2018;Godfrey and Hailemichael, 2017). Ensuring the availability of groundwater in strategic locations ahead of drought conditions can help prevent the need for emergency response while reducing some of the household and economic water stress Thomas et al., 2020a;Macdonald et al., 2019;Tucker et al., 2014;Calow et al., 2010). ...
The prevalence of drought in the Horn of Africa has continued to threaten access to safe and affordable water for millions of people. In order to improve monitoring of water pump functionality, telemetry-connected sensors have been installed on 480 electrical groundwater pumps in arid regions of Kenya and Ethiopia, designed to improve monitoring and support operation and maintenance of these water supplies. In this paper, we describe the development and validation of two classification systems designed to identify the functionality and non-functionality of these electrical pumps, one an expert-informed conditional classifier and the other leveraging machine learning. Given a known relationship between surface water availability and groundwater pump use, the classifiers combine in-situ sensor data with remote sensing indicators for rainfall and surface water. Our validation indicates a overall pump status sensitivity (true positive rate) of 82% for the expert classifier and 84% for the machine learner. When the pump is being used, both classifiers have a 100% true positive rate performance. When a pump is not being used, the specificity (true negative rate) is about 50% for the expert classifier and over 65% for the machine learner. If these detection capabilities were integrated into a repair service, the typical uptime of pumps during drought periods in this region could potentially, if budget resources and institutional incentives for pump repairs were provided, result in a drought-period uptime improvement from 60% to nearly of 85% - a 40% reduction in the relative risk of pump downtime.
... Frangopol and Soliman [27] noted that LCC analysis could significantly reduce long-term costs and increase infrastructure sustainability and resilience. Godfrey and Hailemichael [28] concluded that piped water supplies are less expensive than point source supplies when capital expenditure and emergency water supply costs are considered in the LCC. Hasegawa et al. [29] used the concept of LCC to examine the feasibility of pipe diameter reduction in a WDN during depopulation. ...
Water distribution networks (WDNs) comprise a complex network of pipes and are crucial for providing potable water to urban communities. Therefore, WDNs must be carefully managed to avoid problems such as water contamination and service failures; however, this requires a large budget. Because WDN components have different statuses depending on their installation year, location, transmission pressure, and flow rate, it is difficult to plan the rehabilitation schedule within budgetary constraints. This study, therefore, proposes a new pipe replacement scheduling approach to smooth the investment time series based on a life cycle cost (LCC) assessment for a large-scale WDN. The proposed scheduling plan simultaneously considers both the annual budget
limitation and the optimum expenditure on the useful life of pipes. A multi-objective optimization problem consisting of three decision-making objectives—minimum imposed LCC on the network, minimum standard deviation of annual investment, and minimum average age of the network—is thus solved using a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm to obtain an optimal plan. Three scenarios with different pipe replacement time spans and different annual budget constraints are considered accordingly. The results indicate that the proposed scheduling framework provides an efficient water pipe replacement scheduling plan with a smooth management budget.
... USAID and UNICEF estimate that measures taken in advance of drought in this region, including improved operation and maintenance of water pumps, can save hundreds of millions of dollars compared to emergency relief efforts. 103,104 By extension, the increased project cost of improved monitoring can be plausibly justified by the decreased per-person cost of a service. These proactive measurements and actions may influence policy as well as practice in delivering cost-effective services (e.g., ref 59). ...
Engineered environmental health interventions and services in low-income and resource-limited settingssuch as water supply and treatment, sanitation, and cleaner household energy serviceshave had a less than expected record of sustainability and have sometimes not delivered on their potential to improve health. These interventions require both effectively functioning technologies as well as supporting financial, political, and human resource systems, and may depend on user behaviors as well as professionalized service delivery to reduce harmful exposures. In this perspective, we propose that the application of smarter, more actionable monitoring and decision support systems and aligned financial incentives can enhance accountability between donors, implementers, service providers, governments, and the people who are the intended beneficiaries of development programming. Made possible in part by new measurement techniques, including emerging sensor technologies, rapid impact evaluation, citizen science, and performance-based contracting, such systems have the potential to propel the development of solutions that can work over the long-term, allowing the benefits of environmental health improvements to be sustained in settings where they are most critical by improving trust and mutual accountability among stakeholders.
... The destabilizing impact of drought emergencies increases with each successive event, leading to vulnerability and insecurity in this complex region of Africa. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and UNICEF estimate that measures taken in advance of drought can save hundreds of millions of dollars compared to emergency relief efforts in the region (Godfrey and Hailemichael, 2017;Venton, 2018). ...
Millions of people living in the drought-prone Horn of Africa face an increasing threat from a lack of safe, reliable, and affordable water year-round as droughts become more severe and frequent. Drought emergencies emerge when reduced rainfall conspires with limited community water service capacity to cause dramatic reductions in access to water for people, livestock and agriculture. Drought-driven humanitarian emergencies can be prevented if groundwater is reliably made available at strategic locations during cycles of water stress. The Drought Resilience Impact Platform (DRIP) is an initiative combining early detection and planning with proactive groundwater management to ensure water availability, thus enabling drought-prone communities to become effective managers in the prevention of these humanitarian crises. It replaces reactive and expensive short-term assistance measures, like water trucking, with a framework for drought resilience. DRIP links in situ sensors deployed in East Africa with remote sensing data to improve estimates for rainfall and groundwater availability, and it will also develop a localized model for water demand forecasting. These indicators support the operation and maintenance of strategically selected groundwater borehole systems, thereby helping to support water delivery during dry and drought seasons. DRIP can be used to support pay-for-performance contracting, ensuring that water asset management is incentivized. DRIP is presently monitoring the water supplies of about 3 million people in East Africa. This paper presents DRIP's current web-based functionality, which uses several custom and commercial tools, and its applications, including rainfall-adjusted indicators of water pump functionality in Kenya and Ethiopia. Future work includes experimental and statistical characterization of the impact of these capabilities on water security, and the development of forecasting capabilities.
... In Kenya, over half of rural water supplies were nonfunctional or dry during the 2016 drought, causing a ten-fold increase in the cost of water (UNICEF, 2017). In Ethiopia, the costs of emergency water trucking attributable to water system failures are estimated at over two thousand dollars per person over ten years (Godfrey and Hailemichael, 2017). ...
Drought-driven humanitarian emergencies are becoming more frequent in the Horn of Africa where millions of people in this arid region face chronic water and food insecurity. Evidence from the region shows increasing reliance on groundwater supplies, infrastructure and institutional systems in response to decreasing rainfall. Drought emergencies can be mitigated by investing in resilience efforts that make safe water reliably available at strategic groundwater abstraction locations during cycles of water stress. A combination of early warning data, policy reform, asset management and improved rural water supplies and maintenance may enable rapid, responsive, and accountable water governance that is more cost effective than emergency relief and better positioned to absorb and adapt to shocks.
... If a system is unreliable at such points of peak demand, the social and economic implications lead to negative impacts, often hitting the most vulnerable hardest. For example, the cost of humanitarian responses for addressing water infrastructure failure in droughts run into hundreds of millions of US dollars, which could be reduced through investing in reliably maintained water systems (Godfrey and Hailemichael 2017). Second, the planning case builds the latter point on understanding risks in system design. ...
Universal delivery of improved drinking water services in rural Africa and Asia has been an enduring policy challenge for decades. Whilst drinking water coverage has generally improved, only one in five countries below 95% coverage in 2015 is currently on track to achieve basic drinking water services for all by 2030. We identify and evaluate three periods of rural water policy in Africa and Asia between 1980 and 2030 to (i) identify four pillars of rural water policy design, (ii) consider how they have adapted over time, and (iii) propose priorities for progress. We argue for an increase in investments in designing and testing emerging institutional models for rural water services to evaluate the trade‐offs in performance across institutional, financial and operational dimensions. Stronger empirical evidence will allow policy and planning to balance and negotiate short‐term political goals with long‐term sector sustainability for the benefit of the poor.
... LCCA calculates the initial construction cost, the operational management cost after completion, and the residual cost of the reconstruction scheme during the whole life operation period. Present value of future costs (PVC) was used to calculate the total cost of drainage system reconstruction schemes throughout the entire life cycle (Chou and Yeh 2015;Godfrey and Hailemichael 2017). Costs invested in reconstruction schemes during the life cycle are converted to the present value of costs so that they can be compared on an equal basis. ...
In order to mitigate urban flooding and combined sewer overflows, an integrated assessment method was proposed to identify the optimum reconstruction scheme of a drainage system by considering environment, economy, and society. The integrated assessment framework consisted of the drainage system model establishment, analytic hierarchy process theory, and regret value method. Five drainage system reconstruction schemes for Chaohu city were proposed in this study, and they were evaluated according to nine assessment factors by the integrated assessment method at the initial and future stages. The integrated assessment results show that setting up interceptive equipment for a combined drainage network is the optimal reconstruction scheme at both the initial and future stages of the life cycle. This means that an interceptive combined drainage network is better than a separate drainage network or setting up storage tanks in particular situations from a comprehensive perspective.
Self-supply of drinking water is implemented in areas where the coverage of piped water services is inadequate, low incomes residents, and poor performance of piped water supply. The Life Cycle Cost (LCC) is a method of evaluating all costs incurred and is used to track the financing of the drinking water sector. This study analyses LCC of self-supply water in the Metro City, Indonesia. A field survey was conducted using a questionnaire in October 2020 for households in Metro City that captured information on costs incurred for household water use. It was observed that self-supply water uses in Metro City accounts for 92.86.30% of all water supplies. The average recurrent expenditure is Rp.224,344/ year with mean of capital cost is Rp.275,273. Most expensive cost for self-supply is borehole. High cost of borehole due deeper groundwater source, borehole use more pump electricity and higher drilling cost. This funding for selfsupply water is carried out independently by the households. These results highlighted the importance of self-financing for the water supply sector. Increased reliability and safety of self-supply require a better awareness of the costs and benefits of developing water sources. Furthermore, selfsupply water requires better governance to achieve safe water access.
Madagascar is subject to recurrent droughts. In the semi-arid area of the southern part, the phenomenon is cyclical. To better understand and predict the risks of droughts, UNICEF installed a Groundwater Early Warning System (GEWS) in this area to monitor groundwater and predict droughts. Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and rainfall data were also monitored as part of the survey. The GEWS was installed in 23 piezometers across eight of the most affected districts in the south. Of these sites, ten were equipped with telemetric probes and 13 with manual probes. Data including static water levels, conductivity, and NDVI images were collected, analysed, and reproduced onto a map to show the static water level variations and the impact of drought severity on vegetation, water levels, water quality and price. Monthly drought-focused bulletins, based on the collected data, were produced and shared amongst WASH partners and the communities to provide them with information to better guide planning and implementation of water programmes and the cost of water.
La pandemia de coronavirus detectada por vez primera en Wuhan, China, en diciembre de 2019, ha cobrado un precio devastador en toda América Latina y el Caribe (ALC).
Dado que la pandemia está causando graves estragos en la región, no existen formas sencillas de garantizar el acceso a agua de calidad. Por otra parte, existe un reconocimiento generalizado de la importancia del agua, especialmente con la pandemia en curso.
El objetivo del libro es analizar la literatura que cubra el progreso realizado en términos de la administración pública del agua en ALC en tiempos de la COVID-19 considerando las implicaciones de la Administración Pública para comprender mejor cómo los países
de ALC pueden responder a estas circunstancias únicas. La pandemia de coronavirus introduce presiones únicas y subraya el nexo entre el acceso al agua y la salud. Los gobiernos latinoamericanos enfrentan actualmente circunstancias aparentemente insuperables. Aunque esta tarea parece abrumadora, existe un laberinto de soluciones que los gobiernos pueden explorar para garantizar el acceso continuo al agua potable. Existe una necesidad urgente de políticas integrales e instituciones sólidas que puedan implementar soluciones efectivas. Además, es fundamental para esto la necesidad de inculcar un sentido de transparencia que falta en las instituciones. Las medidas que pueden ayudar a mejorar la provisión de servicios de agua a las poblaciones rurales se centran en dos dimensiones clave: acceso rápido y disponibilidad sostenible.
Arid areas in East Africa are characterized by physical water scarcity. The physical water scarcity is further exacerbated by poor water quality (mainly salinity and fluoride) of mainly groundwater sources. Combined physical water scarcity and poor water quality makes the region a hydrogeologically difficult environment. Nevertheless, some viable high-yielding aquifers exist in East Africa. Difficult hydrogeology means that the best practices of reaching rural dwellers, towns, and urban centers require specialized financial, technical, and engineering approaches. The chapter describes the hydrogeology difficulty and the ongoing management strategies and its implications for the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene sector in East Africa arid regions.
Achieving universal access to sufficient water is becoming more challenging as climate change exacerbates water insecurity. Previous studies of water insecurity and climate-related hazards recommend understanding how people perceive and manage water-related risks. By uniquely combining protection motivation theory and photovoice, we explore water infrastructure's function in rural Kenyan households’ perception and mitigation of water-related risk. We find that infrastructure construction provides a sense of security, regardless of long-term management plans. During the dry season, built infrastructure's viability to mitigate risk is strained due to natural infrastructure's unreliability. In the context of limited built infrastructure, natural infrastructure, though unimproved, is necessary for water security. In the expected absence of large-scale infrastructure projects, for water authorities in rural Kenya, we recommend the construction of small-scale infrastructure to increase reliance upon rainwater harvesting and lessen the strain on other built infrastructure during the dry season. Coupling our method with an itemized scale can help explain discrepancies between actual insecurity and individuals’ responses to help water authorities predict interventions’ effectiveness and inform the division of responsibilities in policies intended to promote sustainable infrastructure management. We also recommend our method for assessing water infrastructure's role among households managing multiple climate-related risks to expand infrastructure's resilience.
Millions of people in the arid regions of Kenya and Ethiopia face water scarcity and frequent drought. Water resource forecasting and reliable operation of groundwater distribution systems may improve drought resilience. In this study, we examined three remote sensing data sets against in-situ sensor-collected groundwater extraction data from 221 water points serving over 1.34 million people across northern Kenya and Afar, Ethiopia between January 1, 2017 and August 31, 2018. In models containing rainfall as a binary variable, we observed an overall 23% increase in borehole runtime following weeks with no rainfall compared to weeks preceded by some rainfall. Further, a 1 mm increase in rainfall was associated with a 1% decrease in borehole use the following week. When surface water availability is reduced during the dry seasons, groundwater demand increases. Our findings emphasize the imperative to maintain functionality of groundwater boreholes in these regions which often suffer drought related emergencies. Funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development, the World Bank, the National Science Foundation, and the Cisco Foundation. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Agency for International Development or the United States Government.
The inclusion of the Water Goal in the United Nations 2015 Development Agenda recognizes that water is at the heart of all aspects of sustainable development rather than being secondary to other sectors, where it risked becoming neglected and therefore no-one's responsibility. It puts water management firmly in the hands of the water and water-using sectors. This paper suggests that for all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be successful, a major shift in conceptual thinking about water management is needed. It must be recognized that there is no single approach for sequencing portfolios of investment to improve water security and that a high degree of flexibility will be needed to embrace the unique economic, social and environmental circumstances that will determine a nation's pathway towards water security and prosperity. Above all, governments must accept and embrace interconnectedness and take an integrated approach to water management. But the big question now facing many countries is how to best put an integrated approach into practice.
The ambitious drinking water Sustainable Development Goal target of achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030 has been set. How indicators for this target are defined and monitored will be key to ensuring that resources are most effectively deployed to benefit those currently without access to safe drinking water. This paper discusses opportunities and challenges associated with the proposed indicators and suggests that monitoring must move beyond the monitoring and evaluation paradigm and be linked to surveillance systems that can potentially improve operational performance and financial sustainability of water services at a local level.
Water scarcity conditions over the 21st century both globally and regionally
are assessed in the context of climate change and climate mitigation
policies, by estimating both water availability and water demand within the
Global Change Assessment Model (GCAM), a leading community-integrated
assessment model of energy, agriculture, climate, and water. To quantify
changes in future water availability, a new gridded water-balance global
hydrologic model – namely, the Global Water Availability Model (GWAM) – is
developed and evaluated. Global water demands for six major demand sectors
(irrigation, livestock, domestic, electricity generation, primary energy
production, and manufacturing) are modeled in GCAM at the regional scale (14
geopolitical regions, 151 sub-regions) and then spatially downscaled to
0.5° × 0.5° resolution to match the scale of GWAM.
Using a baseline scenario (i.e., no climate change mitigation policy) with
radiative forcing reaching 8.8 W m−2 (equivalent to the SRES A1Fi
emission scenario) and three climate policy scenarios with increasing
mitigation stringency of 7.7, 5.5, and 4.2 W m−2 (equivalent to the
SRES A2, B2, and B1 emission scenarios, respectively), we investigate the
effects of emission mitigation policies on water scarcity. Two carbon tax
regimes (a universal carbon tax (UCT) which includes land use change
emissions, and a fossil fuel and industrial emissions carbon tax (FFICT)
which excludes land use change emissions) are analyzed. The baseline scenario
results in more than half of the world population living under extreme water
scarcity by the end of the 21st century. Additionally, in years 2050 and
2095, 36% (28%) and 44% (39%) of the global population,
respectively, is projected to live in grid cells (in basins) that will
experience greater water demands than the amount of available water in a year
(i.e., the water scarcity index (WSI) > 1.0). When comparing the climate
policy scenarios to the baseline scenario while maintaining the same baseline
socioeconomic assumptions, water scarcity declines under a UCT mitigation
policy but increases with a FFICT mitigation scenario by the year 2095,
particularly with more stringent climate mitigation targets. Under the FFICT
scenario, water scarcity is projected to increase, driven by higher water
demands for bio-energy crops.
Achieving basic water security, both harnessing the productive potential of water and limiting its destructive impact, has always been a societal priority. To capture this duality, water security is defined here as the availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies. This paper looks broadly at those countries that have achieved water security, the paths they chose and the costs they paid, and those countries that have not achieved water security and how this constrains economies and societies. It defines three typologies: countries that have harnessed hydrology, those hampered by hydrology and those that are hostage to hydrology. It finds that countries remaining hostage to hydrology are typically among the world's poorest. They face “difficult” hydrologies often characterized by high inter- and intra-annual rainfall and runoff variability, where the level of institutional and infrastructure investment needed is very high and the ability to invest is low.
This paper seeks to capture the dynamics of achieving water security in a hypothetical water and growth “S-curve”, which illustrates how a minimum platform of investments in water institutions and infrastructure can produce a tipping point beyond which water makes an increasingly positive contribution to growth and how that tipping point will vary in different circumstances. As there are inevitable trade-offs, achieving water security is never without social and environmental costs; in some countries these are significant, often unforeseen and even unacceptable. This brief analysis suggests that the only historically demonstrated path to achieving water security at the national level has been through investment in an evolving balance of complementary institutions and infrastructure, but that lessons exist for following this basic path in more sustainable and balanced ways. Insights are provided for balancing and sequencing investments, adapting to changing values and priorities, and pushing down the social and environmental costs.
The paper concludes that most water-insecure countries today face far greater challenges than those that achieved water security in the last century and are wealthy countries today. They face more difficult hydrologies and a greater understanding of and therefore greater responsibility for, the social and environment trade-offs inherent in water management. As the costs of poor countries not achieving water security, in terms of human suffering, sustained poverty, constrained growth and social unrest, would be very high, achieving water security is a challenge that must be recognized and must be met.
A water supply system can be impacted by rainfall reduction due to climate change, thereby reducing its supply potential. This highlights the need to understand the system resilience, which refers to the ability to maintain service under various pressures (or disruptions). Currently, the concept of resilience has not yet been widely applied in managing water supply systems. This paper proposed three technical resilience indictors to assess the resilience of a water supply system. A case study analysis was undertaken of the Water Grid system of Queensland State, Australia, to showcase how the proposed indicators can be applied to assess resilience. The research outcomes confirmed that the use of resilience indicators is capable of identifying critical conditions in relation to the water supply system operation, such as the maximum allowable rainfall reduction for the system to maintain its operation without failure. Additionally, resilience indicators also provided useful insight regarding the sensitivity of the water supply system to a changing rainfall pattern in the context of climate change, which represents the system's stability when experiencing pressure. The study outcomes will help in the quantitative assessment of resilience and provide improved guidance to system operators to enhance the efficiency and reliability of a water supply system.
With the politics of the environment so fundamental to the development process in rural India, this paper analyses the relations between water discourses and drinking water technology. First, the national discourses of water are analysed using key policy and populist documents. Second, the paper presents ethnographic fieldwork studying the politics of drinking water in rural Bihar, where the relative merits of borehole handpumps and open wells are contested. The links between the national discourses and local contestation over appropriate technology are examined. The paper argues both policy and traditionalist perspectives are too technologically deterministic to adequately account for the myriad challenges of delivering rural water supply. The emphasis on technology, rather than service levels, creates the conditions in which capability traps emerge in terms of service provision. This is not only in terms of monitoring regimes but in the very practices of rural actors who use certain water supply technologies under an illusion of safety. With a focus on furthering the policy debate, the paper considers ways forward and suggests that a move from a binary understanding of access to a holistic measure of service levels will reduce the potential for political contestation and capability traps in rural water supply.
The "long rains" season of East Africa has recently experienced a series of devastating droughts, whereas the majority of climate models predict increasing rainfall for the coming decades. This has been termed the East African climate paradox and has implications for developing viable adaptation policies. A logical framework is adopted that leads to six key hypotheses that could explain this paradox. The first hypothesis that the recent observed trend is due to poor quality data is promptly rejected. An initial judgment on the second hypothesis that the projected trend is founded on poor modeling is beyond the scope of a single study. Analysis of a natural variability hypothesis suggests this is unlikely to have been the dominant driver of recent droughts, although it may have contributed. The next two hypotheses explore whether the balance between competing forcings could be changing. Regarding the possibility that the past trend could be due to changing anthropogenic aerosol emissions, the results of sensitivity experiments are highly model dependent, but some show a significant impact on the patterns of tropical SST trends, aspects of which likely caused the recent long rains droughts. Further experiments suggest land-use changes are unlikely to have caused the recent droughts. The last hypothesis that the response to CO2 emissions is nonlinear explains no more than 10% of the contrast between recent and projected trends. In conclusion, it is recommended that research priorities now focus on providing a process-based expert judgment of the reliability of East Africa projections, improving the modeling of aerosol impacts on rainfall, and better understanding the relevant natural variability.
This paper examines some of the challenges related to international development, delivery of the UN Millennium Development Goals and the provision of effective infrastructure, in particular with respect to safe water supplies and sanitation.
This study links a multisectoral, regionalized, dynamic, computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of Ethiopia with a system country‐specific hydrology, crop, road, and hydropower engineering models to simulate the economic impacts of climate change scenarios from global circulation models (GCMs) to 2050. In the absence of externally funded, policy‐driven adaptation investments, Ethiopia's GDP in 2050 will be up to 10% below the counterfactual no climate change (historical climate) baseline. Suitably designed adaptation investments could restore aggregate welfare to baseline levels at a cost that is substantially lower than the welfare losses as a result of climate change. Such investments, even if funded from domestic resources, have benefits that greatly exceed their costs, and are largely consistent with Ethiopia's long‐run development strategy.
Water reuse is recognized as a tool to increase water supply in peri-urban areas of semi-arid and arid regions of the world. However, it is an option rarely explored for rural areas in developing countries, and has not been documented extensively in the scientific literature. This paper presents results from 6 greywater reuse systems which were built with the objective to augment water supply and to provide sanitation in rural low income areas of Madhya Pradesh, India. The systems are based on reclaiming greywater from bathing for the use in toilet flushing and kitchen garden irrigation. The reuse systems were implemented based on the scientific rationale presented in the WHO (2006) guidelines. The paper presents evidence from the operation and evaluation of the greywater treatment plants under field conditions between 2005 and 2008. The paper concludes that greywater is a highly cost effective solution for water scarcity. In this study, reusing greywater resulted in a 60% increase in water availability, a reduction in open defecation and a fourfold increase in food availability.
Population Projection of Ethiopia for All Regions at Woreda Level From
- Csa-Ethiopia