Recommendations

Click here for a summary of Findings and Recommendations 

Work with clients and partners to ensure that critical water issues are adequately addressed. 

• Seek ways to support those countries that face the greatest water stress. The Mid-Cycle Implementation Progress Report should suggest a way to package tailored measures to help the Bank and other donors work with these clients to address the most urgent needs, which will be far more challenging as water supply becomes increasingly constrained in arid areas.
  
  
• Ensure that projects pay adequate attention to conserving groundwater and ensuring that the quantity extracted is sustainable.
  
  
• Find effective ways to help countries address coastal management issues. ▪ Help countries strengthen attention to sanitation.

Strengthen the supply and use of data on water to better understand the linkages among water, economic development, and project achievement.

• In project appraisal documents, routinely quantify the benefits of wastewater treatment, health improvements, and environmental restoration.
  
  
• Support more frequent and more thorough water monitoring of all sorts in client countries, particularly the most vulnerable ones, and help ensure that countries treat monitoring data as a public good and make it broadly available.
  
  
• In the design of water resources management projects that support hydrological and meteorological monitoring systems, pay close attention to stakeholder participation, maintenance, and the appropriate choice of monitoring equipment and facilities.
  
  
• Systematically analyze whether environmental restoration will be essential for water-related objectives to be met in a particular setting.

Monitor demand management approaches to identify which aspects are working or not working, and build on these lessons of experience.

• Clarify how to cover the cost of water service delivery in the absence of full cost recovery. To the extent that borrowers must cover the cost of water services out of general revenue, share the lessons of international experience with them so they can allocate costs most effectively.
  
  
• Identify ways to more effectively use fees and tariffs to reduce water consumption.
  
  
• Carefully monitor and evaluate the experience with quotas as a means to moderate agricultural water use.