Investing in Water and Growth: Recent Developments and Perspectives addresses this conundrum in a cohesive and practical way. It is a one-stop shop for understanding why the financing of water-related expenditures matters, what is at stake, and the options available to ensure water-related investment needs are properly financed in ways that generate benefits for communities and contribute to sustainable growth. The book combines the perspectives of policymakers, economists and financiers in a unique, multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach. The book is structured into four distinct parts that target a specific set of questions and content development. Each section of the book has a multidisciplinary approach that provides a robust overview of key issues. The book combines different types of knowledge – from theory to practice, providing a full view of the topics discussed. - Includes numerous examples and real-world case studies - Discusses the concepts of planning, the planning process, integrated planning and public involvement - Synthesizes key evidence and arguments for investing in water security and sustainable growth

This publication examines the critical issues surrounding water security (water shortage, water excess, inadequate water quality, the resilience of freshwater systems), providing a rationale for a risk-based approach and the management of trade-offs between water and other policies.

Nature-Based Solutions and Water Security: An Action Agenda for the 21st Century presents an action agenda for natural infrastructure on topics of standards and principles, technical evaluation and design tools, capacity building and innovative finance. Chapters introduce the topic and concepts of natural infrastructure, or nature-based solutions (NBS) and water security, with important background on the urgency of the global water crisis and the role that NBS can, and should play, in addressing this crisis. Sections also present the community of practice's collective thinking on a prioritized action agenda to guide more rapid progress in mainstreaming NBS. With contributions from global authors, including key individuals and organizations active in developing NBS solutions, users will also find important conclusions and recommendations, thus presenting a collaboratively developed, consensus roadmap to scaling NBS. Covers all issues of water security and natural infrastructures Presents a comprehensive state of synthesis, providing readers with a solid grounding in the field of natural infrastructures and water security Includes a fully workable and intuitive roadmap for action that is presented as a guide to the most important actions for practitioners, research questions for academics, and information on promising careers for students entering the field

Investments in water and sanitation are a prerequisite to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular on SDG 6 ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Blended finance can play an important role in strategically investing development finance to mobilise additional commercial finance needed to fill the current investment gaps. Thus far, however, blended finance has not reached scale in the water and sanitation sector. A greater evidence base is needed to better understand the current applications as well as the potential of blended models in the water and sanitation sector. This publication takes a commercial investment perspective and provides insights into three subsectors: (1) water and sanitation utilities, (2) small-scale off-grid sanitation and (3) multi-purpose water infrastructure and landscape-based approaches. The publication draws out recommendations for policy makers and practitioners to apply and scale innovative blended finance approaches where most appropriate.

Financing Water Security and Green Growth offers a comprehensive overview of the innovative financial instruments and approaches available to implement water security and green growth initiatives at various scales and in different contexts. Robert C. Brears explores the use of a variety of public, private, and blended finance models to create climate-resilient water supplies, reduce water-energy-food nexus pressures, encourage water conservation and efficiency, and increase water reliability. He examines how these methods can decrease the costs and pollution associated with wastewater disposal, utilize natural processes to improve water quality, manage water quantity by restoring the hydrologic function of the landscape, and improve overall water governance. The book also provides in-depth case studies of the innovative application of financing tools to achieve water security and green growth in various locations of differing climates, lifestyles, and income levels, and identifies best practices.

This book highlights the relationship between the water sector and various other sectors in order to establish an improved understanding of the importance of water resources as an essential cross-cutting vector of socio-economic development. The book is both policy and practice oriented and is not constrained by existing definitions on water security. It includes actual experiences of policy, management, development and governance decisions taken within the water sector, and examples on how these have affected the energy and agricultural sectors as well as impacted the environment, and vice versa, as appropriate. It also discusses trade-offs, short and long-term implications, lessons learnt, and the way forward. The book includes case studies on cities, countries and regions such as Australia, China, Singapore, Central Asia, Morocco, Southern Africa, France, Latin America, Brazil and California.

The Asian Water Development Outlook (AWDO) 2020 assesses national water security across Asia and the Pacific, focusing on five key dimensions: rural, economic, urban, environmental, and water-related disaster. Despite considerable achievements in Asia and the Pacific since the AWDO 2013 edition, 1.5 billion people in rural areas and 0.6 billion in urban areas still lack adequate water supply and sanitation. Sound water management and access to reliable service delivery remain vital to inclusive economic growth and social well-being, especially after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This edition includes two new sections highlighting the importance of finance and governance to water security as well as case studies demonstrating how the AWDO has influenced policy development in four countries.

The prosperity and national security of the United States depend directly on the prosperity and stability of both partner and competing countries around the world. Today, U.S. interests are under rising pressure from water scarcity, extreme weather events and water-driven ecological change in key geographies of strategic interest to the U.S. Those water-driven stresses are undermining economic productivity, weakening governance systems and fraying social cohesion in scores of countries and, in the process, undermining the vitality of rural livelihoods, fostering local and ethnic conflicts, driving broad migratory movements and contributing to the growth of insurgencies and terrorist networks. While the U.S. intelligence community has steadily expanded natural resource concerns in their global threat analyses, our overseas development assistance remains locked into provision of water and hygienic services rather than responding to the full sweep of global water challenges including governance and policy failures, growing conflicts over water and the need for promoting sustainable transboundary water arrangements in partner countries. A fundamental departure from the past is urgently needed. Based on 18 case studies, Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy provides an analytical framework to help policy makers, scholars and researchers studying the intersection of U.S. foreign policy with the environment and sustainability issues, interpret the impacts of water-driven social disruptions on the stability of partner governments and U.S. interests abroad. The book also delivers specific recommendations to reorient U.S. development and diplomatic engagements that can forestall and prevent social disruptions and ensuing threats to U.S. prosperity and national security.

Africa's Water and Sanitation InfrastructureùAccess, Affordability, and Alternatives integrates a wealth of primary and secondary information to present a quantitative snapshot of the state of the WSS sectors in Africa. It explains the sectoral institutional structures and utility performance and articulates the volume and quality of financing available over time. The authors also evaluate the challenges to the WSS sectors and explore the factors that govern the expansion of coverage over time. Finally, the authors estimate spending needs for WSS, arriving at a funding gap for meeting the MDGs. The proposed directions for the future draw on lessons learned from best practices and present the menu of choices available to African countries, bearing in mind that the challenges differ to a significant extent among countries and solutions must be tailored to national or regional conditions. --Book Jacket.

Spanning millennia and continents, a revealing history that “tackles the most important story of our time: our relationship with water in a world of looming scarcity” (Kelly McEvers, NPR Host). "Far more than a biography of its nominal subject ... The book stands as a compelling history of civilization itself." —The Wall Street Journal Book Review Writing with authority and brio, Giulio Boc­caletti—honorary research associate at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Univer­sity of Oxford—shrewdly combines environmental and social history, beginning with the earliest civ­ilizations of sedentary farmers on the banks of the Nile, the Tigris, and the Euphrates Rivers. Even as he describes how these societies were made possible by sea-level changes from the last glacial melt, he incisively examines how this type of farming led to irrigation and multiple cropping, which, in turn, led to a population explosion and labor specialization. We see with clarity how irrigation’s structure informed social structure (inventions such as the calendar sprung from agricultural necessity); how in ancient Greece, the communal ownership of wells laid the groundwork for democracy; how the Greek and Roman experiences with water security resulted in systems of taxation; and how the modern world as we know it began with a legal framework for the development of water infrastructure. Extraordinary for its monumental scope and piercing insightfulness, Water: A Biography richly enlarges our understanding of our relationship to—and fundamental reliance on—the most elemental substance on earth.