Water - Water & Environment

Sustainable development requires maintaining the stability, health, and productivity of water resources. Water resources (comprising rivers, lakes, groundwater, and wetlands) are essential for the livelihoods of people, the growth of the economy, and the sustenance and health of all species. Freshwater also sustains the integrity of ecosystems. People depend on the hydrological functions of ecosystems. Growing demands for water threaten many lakes, rivers, estuaries and groundwater bodies around the world. The poor often are impacted, as they depend more directly on ecosystem functions than the rich.

Water bodies are used as receptors for waste discharges from point and nonpoint sources of pollution. Water quality degradation can pose serious threats to public health, agricultural and industrial production, ecological functions, and biodiversity.

Key challenges

According to the Bank’s Water Resources Sector Strategy, Environment Strategy and Clean Energy Development Framework, the environment is linked to the management of water resources in four ways:

	Aquatic (and related terrestrial) ecosystems provide habitats for fauna and flora. The aquatic ecosystem is a water-dependent sector just like agriculture, energy, and domestic and industrial water supply.
	The design and operation of infrastructure for water supply, sewerage, irrigation, hydropower, and flood control impacts upstream and downstream ecosystems and communities that depend on them.
	Good environmental management is central to good practice water resources management. This includes maintaining environmental flows, drainage; municipal and industrial wastewater treatment; pollution control; protection of lake basins, watersheds, aquifers and wetlands; and control of invasive weeds.
	Climate change will have a profound impact on water resources, due to changes in rainfall, glacier melt, runoff, coastal groundwater, and water quality. This will have major effects on the sectors that depend on water resources, including urban and rural water supply, agriculture, energy, industry, mining, livestock, fisheries, and the environment.

World Bank Response

The Bank supports and addresses each of these four water-environment linkages in its operations in the water sector. Increasingly, the environmental provisions linked to water management are being mainstreamed in upstream processes such as water policies, plans and programs. In addition, Bank project also integrate early good practices (such as the provisions of environmental flows) into the planning, design and operations of water infrastructure.

The World Bank requires all projects that they fund to remain in compliance with its quality standards (safeguards). The World Bank's environmental and social safeguard policies are designed to prevent and mitigate undue harm to people and their environment in the development process. The Bank increasingly undertakes programs for the protection, restoration and management of lake basins, watersheds, wetlands and aquifers. Adaptation to climate change and climate change mitigation is a growing area of Bank work.