Water - Water Resources Management

Effective water resources management and development are central to sustainable growth and poverty reduction and thus to the mission of the World Bank.

Today, about 700 million people live in countries experiencing water stress or scarcity. By 2035, it is projected that 3 billion people will be living in conditions of severe water stress. Many countries with limited water availability depend on shared water resources, increasing the risk of conflict over these scarce resources.

Water resources management is the integrating concept for a number of water sub-sectors. Use of an integrated water resources perspective ensures that social, economic, environmental, and technical dimensions are taken into account in the management and development of surface waters (rivers, lakes, and wetlands) and groundwater.

Key Challenges
Challenges associated with developing and managing water resources are becoming more acute. Population growth and economic development, and greater appreciation of the value of water in ecosystems, mean that water demands are growing and shifting. Water quality is deteriorating. Water sources – such as rivers, lakes, aquifers, and, and wetlands - are encroached upon. Tensions over water rights are increasing at the level of the village, city, and basin. Increasingly, many rivers and lakes are being affected by invasive species.

Climate change is expected to have diverse impacts on the water cycle, including altered river flows, changes in groundwater recharge, more intense floods, and longer droughts. The inability to predict and manage the quantity and quality of water and the impacts of droughts, floods and climatic variability imposes large costs on many economies in the developing world.

Most developing countries confront two major water resources challenges.

	First, countries face major challenges in developing the laws, regulations and institutions required for managing water resources.
	Second, countries face a major challenge in developing and maintaining an appropriate stock of water infrastructure. Most industrialized countries have invested in major hydraulic infrastructure. Many developing countries have as little as 1/100th as much hydraulic infrastructure as do developed countries with comparable climatic variability.

Water resources management addresses the connections between resource and service management. This means addressing:

	The institutional framework, including the definition and establishment of laws, rights and licenses; the responsibilities of different actors at levels ranging from local watershed management institutions to international basin agencies;
	The management instruments, including regulatory arrangements; financial instruments; standards and plans; mechanisms for effective participation of stakeholders; and knowledge and information systems;
	The development and management of infrastructure for annual and multi-year flow regulation, for floods and droughts, for multi-purpose storage, and for water quality and source protection; and
	The political economy of water management and reform, in which there is particular emphasis on the distribution of benefits and costs, and on the incentives that encourage or constrain more productive and sustainable resource use.

World Bank Response
The active World Bank water resources management portfolio is $3.1 billion.

World Bank support is guided by the 2003 Water Resources Sector Strategy Paper that aims at providing effective, tailored water resources management assistance to countries in an economically sound, socially acceptable, and environmentally responsible manner.

The World Bank supports its client countries in the management and development of water resources infrastructure. The Bank works across sectors, institutions, and countries. Projects support developing and maintaining appropriate stocks of well-performing hydraulic infrastructure as well as improvements in the management of water resources at different levels from local to transnational.

An important tool is the development of country water resources assistance strategies (listed on the left), which describe what the Bank can and will do to help improve water resources management in a country. These strategies can improve the strategic focus of water-related activities, stimulate coordination across water-related sectors within the Bank and the country, and engage regional and global water knowledge.