GLOBAL WATER SECURITY & SANITATION PARTNERSHIP (GWSP)

2.1 billion

people lack access to safe drinking water

4.5 billion

people lack access to safe sanitation

Water touches nearly every aspect of development. It drives economic growth, supports healthy ecosystems and is fun-damental for life. This was recognized in the formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); not just in SDG 6 which calls for universal access to water and sanitation ser-vices and ecosystem management but in many others too: water to grow food to end hunger and poverty, sanitation to improve health, prevent stunting and help children thrive, and water to drive energy production and urban development.Already today, 4.5 billion people lack safely managed sani-tation services and 2.1 billion people lack access to safely managed drinking water services. Unsafe hygiene practic-es are widespread, compounding the effects on people’s health. And water-related hazards such as floods, storms, and droughts are responsible for 9 out of 10 natural disasters. Cli-mate change is expected to increase this risk and place even greater stress on scarce water supplies. Families, farmers, the environment, businesses and cities increasingly compete for dwindling water resources.

FIVE PRIORITY THEMES

Sustainability is ultimately about ensuring that available resources today can continue to deliver benefits to future generations. The partnership focuses on two critical as-pects: 1) the sustainable management of water resources to secure long-term avail-ability, considering the impacts of population growth, rapid urbanization and climate change; 2) adequately built and maintained infrastructure assets.

THE CONTEXT

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Sustainability

Inclusion Inclusion is the process of improving the terms for individuals and groups disadvantaged based on their identity to take part in society. Water belongs to everyone and yet many are excluded from its benefits. So, ensuring that a project enhances the inclusion agenda requires better knowledge on the nature of water inequality, enhancing the capacity of clients and putting in places incentives to enable better outcomes. Underlying such design of course requires strong institutions that will hold state and service providers accountable.

Expanding access to and improving the quality of services can only be achieved and sustained if the institutional arrangements provide the right incentives and resources and the organizations tasked with service delivery also have the requisite capacity. Institutions comprise the formal and informal ‘rules of the game’ within which these organizations operate and, through this, impact the quality and sustainability of services. To strengthen institutions and accountability for service provision, GWSP works to understand the rules of the game and incentive structures to facilitate a pragmatic change process that is grounded in local cultures, economies, and political circumstances.

Institutions

Financing The SDGs come with new and very significant financing needs. For water supply and sanitation, they have been estimated at US$1.7 trillion, or three times the amount historically invested in the sector. US$960 billion will be required between 2005/07 and 2050 to ensure water for agricultural production in 93 developing countries. Failure to address water resources management could diminish national growth rates by as much as 6 percent of GDP by 2050. A two-pronged approach is needed to achieve the SDGs on water: 1) improving the financial viability of the water sector to ensure that “water can pay for water” whilst ensuring affordability of services for the poor; 2) leveraging commercial and non-state sources of financing.

Resilience Management of water resources and water-related services (water and sanitation, irrigation, etc.) will increasingly be subject to shocks in years to come, because of increased climate variability and extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts. Resilient solutions call for strategies and tools at the country, basin, and project level capable of incorporating not only climate and disaster risk consideration, but also innovative solutions to ease water scarcity constraints as well as socioeconomic and environmental considerations. Building climate resilience will require developing tools and approaches that can help save lives and livelihoods.

THE GLOBAL WATER SECURITY & SANITATION PARTNERSHIPNew challenges and new contexts require new responses. That is why the World Bank, together with its partners, has launched a new partnership for a water-secure world, the Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership (GWSP). Current partners include: Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation, Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs; the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency; Switzer-land’s State Secretariat for Economic Affairs and the Rockefeller Foundation. We hope others will join too.Building on a nearly half-century of collaboration driven by the Water and Sanitation Pro-gram (WSP), the Water Partnership Program (WPP) and others, the GWSP aims to provide action equal to the ambition articulated within the SDGs.

A NEW APPROACHThe GWSP primarily focuses on advancing knowledge and building capacity. It supports client governments to achieve the water-related SDGs through the generation of inno-vative global knowledge and the provision of country-level support. It leverages World Bank Group financial instruments and promotes global dialogue and advocacy with key partners and clients to increase reach and impact. This Partnership provides new oppor-tunities to test and expand innovations, builds country capacity and informs client country demand and World Bank operations.

MEASURING RESULTSThe GWSP will measure results at three different levels: � Block A: Direct results from activities

funded by the Partnership � Block B: Impact of GWSP activities on the

Water GP itself � Block C: Combined results at the client-

country level List of Block C Countries: Bangladesh, Benin, Bolivia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Vietnam and Pakistan

BACKGROUNDThe GWSP is a ‘living laboratory’ which provides coun-tries with guidance, policymakers with knowledge and learning products, and the public with resources about why water is so crucial to the world’s wellbeing. The GSWP, hosted by the World Bank’s Water Global Practice (Water GP), offers many years of experience from the ground, some of the world’s foremost water experts and the ability to convene a wide range of di-verse actors.

WASH Poverty Diagnostics – The Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Poverty Diagnostic Initiative has undertaken multidisciplinary research in 18 countries, developing innovative methods to better understand the impacts of inadequate services on human de-velopment outcomes and identify the binding constraints to service delivery. This initiative considers the new standards of the SDGs, which raise the bar by not just aiming for univer-sal access to basic WASH services, but also attempting to close the gaps in service quality, with an eye toward long-term sustainability.Citizen engagement and gender mainstreaming tools - Beneficiary feedback mecha-nisms will be mandatory in all World Bank Group projects by 2018. The GWSP will support the Water GP, partners and clients through � A Global Review of Gender Dimensions of Water and Sanitation Policies. The findings

will be used to support the development of gender action plans, knowledge and dia-logue on gender, water security, and service delivery in selected countries;

� Tools and checklists to address gender as part of sector reform and project design. Rural Water and Sanitation Monitoring System - Used in nine countries in Latin America, this is a monitoring and decision-support tool that improves the quality and sustainability of rural water supply and sanitation services. It will be expanded globally through the GWSP. Water and Resilience - The Water GP’s Decision Tree, developed in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the Rockefeller Foundation, is an analytical framework of analysis that helps water practitioners understand and mitigate climate and disaster risks. Forthcoming - Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Vari-ability - This report will present new evidence to advance our understanding of how rainfall shocks, coupled with water scarcity, affects farms, firms, and families.

GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE INITIATIVES

Block A

Block B

Block C