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Developing country governments and the international development community are looking for ways to accelerate access to improved water and sanitation services beyond the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets. Countries do not have the capacity to meet the need for improved water supplies and sanitation services from public resources alone. These challenges present an opportunity for domestic enterprises in these growing markets. In fact, millions of poor and non-poor households rely on the private sector to meet their needs. The range of private sector services provided goes far beyond final service delivery. The domestic private sector is increasingly being viewed as a central part of the solution. Governments are increasingly interested in engaging with the private sector to increase access of the poor to services. Effective scale-up of access through the domestic private sector requires an understanding of the market potential, the state of entrepreneurs' operations, and factors that shape their business environment and investment decisions. This document examines private sector provision of piped water services and on-site sanitation services in rural areas and small towns, with case studies from several countries. The preferences and circumstances of poor households and the performance of enterprises that provide services directly to them are examined, as are commercial and investment climate factors that may affect enterprises' actual or perceived costs and risks.

What needs to be done to enable the domestic private sector to expand its role in the provision of safe water and improved sanitation to the poor in developing countries? Is an expanded role constrained because there is limited market potential, or is the problem the fact that business models cannot support an expansion of supply? Are government policies and the investment climate making expansion too costly or risky for enterprises to scale up their operations? This book presents the results of a detailed examination of market opportunities for the domestic private sector in the provision of piped water and on-site sanitation services in rural and semi-urban areas and of the commercial, policy, and investment climate that affect the response to these opportunities. It is based on case studies conducted in Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania. The results of focus group discussions with poor households, surveys of enterprises directly serving poor households, and analysis of the supply chains that support them provide insights into the nature of demand for services, the prevailing business models adopted by enterprises, and the impact of policy on decisions to invest or expand operations. The issues preventing the large market for providing poor—and nonpoor—households with piped water and on-site sanitation differ in important ways. This book therefore addresses the two sectors separately. The first part of the book analyzes the challenges facing domestic providers of piped water in Bangladesh, Benin, and Cambodia, countries where very different models of private provision have emerged in response to differing approaches taken by government. The second part analyzes providers of on-site sanitation services in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Peru, and Tanzania, where the models are similar and all providers face demand- and supply-side challenges that are largely unaffected by government policy. This book will be of interest to governments and their multilateral and bilateral development partners, as well as local and international nongovernment agencies concerned with reducing the heavy toll that lack of access to safe water and hygienic sanitation is imposing on poor people around the world. It proposes recommendations that each of these actors can adopt to harness the entrepreneurial capabilities of the domestic private sector to address this continuing challenge.

As globalization links economies, the value of a country's irrigation water becomes increasingly sensitive to competitive forces in world markets. Water policy at the national and regional levels will need to accommodate these forces or water is likely to become undervalued. The inefficient use of this resource will lessen a country's comparative advantage in world markets and slow its transition to higher incomes, particularly in rural households. While professionals widely agree on what constitutes sound water resource management, they have not yet reached a consensus on the best ways of implementing policies. Policymakers have considered pricing water - a debated intervention - in many variations. Setting the price 'right,' some say, may guide different types of users in efficient water use by sending a signal about the value of this resource. Aside from efficiency, itself an important policy objective, equity, accessibility, and implementation costs associated with the right pricing must be considered. Focusing on the examples of China, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, and Turkey, Pricing Irrigation Water provides a clear methodology for studying farm-level demand for irrigation water. This book is the first to link the macroeconomics of policies affecting trade to the microeconomics of water demand for irrigation and, in the case of Morocco, to link these forces to the creation of a water user-rights market. This type of market reform, the contributors argue, will result in growing economic benefits to both rural and urban households.

Many developing countries face daunting water resources challenges as the needs for water supply, irrigation, and hydroelectricity grow; as water becomes more scarce, quality declines, and environmental and social concerns increase; and as the threats posed by goods and droughts are exacerbated by climate change. As a consequence, there is a high and increasing demand for World Bank engagement. Lending for water resources and development accounted for about 16 percent of all World Bank lending over the past decade. Within the World Bank, business strategies for specific water-using sectors, such as water and sanitation, irrigation and drainage, and hydropower, are determined primarily as part of the strategies for these sectors. Water Resources Sector Strategy: Strategic Directions for World Bank Engagement focuses on how to improve the development and management of water resources while providing the principles that link resource management to the specific water-using sectors. The Strategy emphasizes the difficult and contentious issues upon which World Bank practice needs to improve and suggests that the main management challenge is not a vision of integrated water resources management but a “pragmatic but principled” approach.

The revised and updated second edition of Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Changing Environment offers an interdisciplinary guide to the conditions responsible for water and sanitation related diseases. The authors discuss the pathogens, vectors, and their biology, morbidity and mortality that result from a lack of safe water and sanitation. The text also explores the distribution of these diseases and the conditions that must be met to reduce or eradicate them. The text includes contributions from authorities from the fields of climate change, epidemiology, environmental health, environmental engineering, global health, medicine, medical anthropology, nutrition, population, and public health. Covers the causes of individual diseases with basic information about the diseases and data on the distribution, prevalence, and incidence as well as interconnected factors such as environmental factors. The authors cover access to and maintenance of clean water, and guidelines for the safe use of wastewater, excreta, and grey water, plus examples of solutions. Written for students, and professionals in infectious disease, public health and medicine, chemical and environmental engineering, and international affairs, the second edition of Water and Sanitation Related Diseases and the Changing Environment isa comprehensive resource to the conditions responsible for water and sanitation related diseases.

The litany of alarming observations about water use and misuse is now familiar-over a billion people without access to safe drinking water; almost every major river dammed and diverted; increasing conflicts over the delivery of water in urban areas; continuing threats to water quality from agricultural inputs and industrial wastes; and the increasing variability of climate, including threats of severe droughts and flooding across locales and regions. These issues present tremendous challenges for water governance. This book focuses on three major concepts and approaches that have gained currency in policy and governance circles, both globally and regionally-scarcity and crisis, marketization and privatization, and participation.nspace It provides a historical and contextual overview of each of these ideas as they have emerged in global and regional policy and governance circles and pairs these with in-depth case studies that examine manifestations and contestations of water governance internationally. The book interrogates ideas of water crisis and scarcity in the context of bio-physical, political, social and environmental landscapes to better understand how ideas and practices linked to scarcity and crisis take hold, and become entrenched in policy and practice. The book also investigates ideas of marketization and privatization, increasingly prominent features of water governance throughout the global South, with particular attention to the varied implementation and effects of these governance practices. The final section of the volume analyzes participatory water governance, querying the disconnects between global discourses and local realities, particularly as they intersect with the other themes of interest to the volume.nspace Promoting a view of changing water governance that links across these themes and in relation to contemporary realities, the book is invaluable for students, researchers, advocates, and policy makers interest

Purpose Freshwater availability is reducing globally, due to increasing demand with population growth and climate change and is disproportionately impacting developing countries. This study aims to investigate the dynamics of water access and consumption across all regions of Thailand with various characteristics and water systems. Understanding the relationship between institutional, economic and climate variables in Thailand’s water management is important for water scarcity planning. Our paper fills a gap in the literature by examining the determinants of water consumption and exploring potential water management policies. Design/methodology/approach The authors empirically analyze the determinants of water consumption in Thailand, including institutional, economic and climate variables. The authors use data sets from both metropolitan and provincial waterworks authorities (PWA), as well as economic and meteorological macro-level data. The authors also adopt an auto-regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and a Johansen cointegration test to estimate short- and long-run effects of the variables on water consumption. Findings The authors confirm a negative relationship between water pricing and consumption and verify a positive relationship between economic growth and water consumption across most regions of Thailand. Furthermore, the authors reveal a clear relationship between climate factors and water consumption and an inverse relationship between income and water consumption in metropolitan area. Findings indicate that authorities, especially PWA, should examine high water use in agriculture and develop regulations to ensure equitable water distribution to sustain economic growth. The authors recommend that water prices are increased within specific income thresholds to prevent impacting low-income families and to secure higher public revenue. In pursuit of environmental sustainability, the authors also recommend increasing public awareness of freshwater scarcity through education programs and investment in water-saving technologies. Differences among regions should be considered when developing water management strategies, which could be monitored through the respective water boards. Originality/value This study provides deep insight into the key factors that drive both water prices and water consumption in poor and rich areas. The unique nature of the research indicated that the paper will be of interest to policymakers and the academic community. The findings are relevant for water consumption management in Thailand and other developing countries with similar characteristics.

Lack of access to potable water and good sanitation is still one of the most challenging public health concerns of the twenty-first century despite steady progress over recent decades. Almost a billion people globally lack access to safe water; over two billion live without adequate sanitation facilities. The challenge is even more daunting for Sub-Saharan Africa where coverage levels for both potable water and sanitation remain critically low. The urgent need to address the issue calls for adequate understanding of the socio-economic dimensions. Using the 2008 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey, we investigated the socio-economic and demographic factors associated with access to potable water and improved sanitation facilities. Our generalized linear models reveal that income, education, household size, and region are significant predictors of improved water and sanitation access. Our discussion and conclusion sections highlight the implications of the study results for water policy formulation and implementation in Ghana, and broadly for other developing countries.

Fulfilling the demand of clean potable water to the general public has long been a challenging task in most developing countries due to various reasons. Large-scale membrane water treatment systems have proven to be successful in many advanced countries in the past two decades. This paves the way for developing countries to study the feasibility and adopt the utilization of membrane technology in water treatment. There are still many challenges to overcome, particularly on the much higher capital and operational cost of membrane technology compared to the conventional water treatment system. This review aims to delve into the progress of membrane technology for water treatment systems, particularly in developing countries. It first concentrates on membrane classification and its application in water treatment, including membrane technology progress for large-scale water treatment systems. Then, the fouling issue and ways to mitigate the fouling will be discussed. The feasibility of membrane technologies in developing countries was then evaluated, followed by a discussion on the challenges and opportunities of the membrane technology implementation. Finally, the current trend of membrane research was highlighted to address future perspectives of the membrane technologies for clean water production.

Purpose One of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals is to ensure the availability of improved drinking water for everyone. In this study, we examine the association between access to improved drinking water at the district level and child nutritional outcomes in Pakistan.Design/methodology/approach We employ district-level unbalanced panel data from Pakistan from various rounds of Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Surveys and Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys compiled by the Data4Pakistan, Pakistan District Development Portal. We examine the impact of the percentage of the population in a given district with access to clean drinking water on the percentage of stunted, underweight and wasted children in the district. The analysis proceeds in two steps. In the first step, we explore the spatial distribution of improved drinking water coverage and child development outcomes across districts. In the second step, we study their relationship by employing standard panel estimation methods and controlling for district characteristics.Findings The spatial analysis reveals the large disparity among districts and provinces in terms of improved drinking water coverage and child nutrition. The estimation results indicate that there is a significant association between the accessibility of improved drinking water and child development outcomes. The effect is significant for child stunting and underweight but not for child wasting. The impact appears to be stronger in rural districts. These findings are robust to alternate empirical strategies.Originality/value This is the first such study to examine the provision of improved drinking water at the district level in relation to child developmental outcomes in a developing country context.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-09-2023-0739