External Topic Model - Europe & Central Asia

Map of ECA

Europe and Central Asia (ECA) has relatively abundant supplies of water (about 11,000 cubic meters per capita). Most countries in the region inherited large stocks of water infrastructure; which has deteriorated dramatically due to poor operation and maintenance during the transition from a planned to a market economy.

Generally, the need is not for more infrastructure but for good decision making on what and what not to maintain and rehabilitate. Additional investments are needed, however, in drainage and flood management.

About 92 percent of ECA’s population has access to improved water supply, and 85 percent has access to improved sanitation. However, a growing disparity in incomes, both among and within the countries of ECA, is widening the gaps in access to and affordability of services.

Key Water Challenges
This is geographically the largest of the World Bank regions and highly diverse. Broadly, the north and west of the region are water-abundant, with flood management and water quality as major challenges. European Union candidate countries must focus their efforts on meeting the European regulations, which requires better urban wastewater management, controlling nitrate runoff from farms, managing industrial pollution, and implementing the Natura 2000 network of critical habitats, the EU Water Framework Directive, and the forthcoming floods directive.

In the water-scarce countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, to the south and east of the region, irrigation is the major water use and essential to farming. Needed improvements in this part of the region include strengthening irrigation water users’ associations and cost recovery, as well as more investments in urban water supply and sewerage, including for small towns.

Common challenges throughout ECA include:

Water resources management: Trans-national initiatives will be required for managing shared water bodies such as rivers and seas. In many countries, better risk management is needed for droughts, floods, and landslides, focusing on disaster mitigation as well as post-disaster assistance.

Irrigation: A collapse of irrigation infrastructure has made water distribution unreliable, and caused waterlogging and salinity.

Water supply and sanitation: Continued rehabilitation and modernization of water infrastructure is required combined with institutional strengthening. Modernizing subsidizing schemes so they reach the poor should accompany increased cost recovery.

Hydropower: Ensuring the safety of existing dams is critical. Also multi-partner engagement in hydropower in Central Asia can help countries develop their potential in a sustainable way.

World Bank Response
Water resources management: World Bank assistance supports river basin management, including for trans-boundary challenges in the Black Sea/Danube Basins, the Baltic Sea Basin, and the Aral Sea Basin. Assistance for flood protection includes improvements in physical works, but also more comprehensive approaches such as upgrading flood monitoring, forecasting, and warning systems.

Water supply and sanitation: World Bank projects support institutional development as well as infrastructure rehabilitation to help improve the reliability and quality of both services.

Irrigation and drainage: Projects address the technical, managerial, and financial constraints on providing reliable irrigation. They support the rehabilitation and modernization of infrastructure and include support for forming water users’ associations and building capacity in irrigation agencies.

Hydropower: Large untapped hydropower resources (in Russia, Central Asia, South East Europe and Turkey) are increasingly attracting the interest of investors. The Bank continues to focus on dam safety and rehabilitation projects with several hydropower development projects in the pipeline in the medium to longer term.