"With an average annual rainfall of 1,170 mm, India is one of the wettest countries in the world. Still, even with its rich natural water resources, with more than 300,000 square meters of bodies of water, the country is plagued by environmental issues such as water pollution from raw sewage and runoff of agricultural pesticides (Sharma, 2005). Another major problem is that tap water is not potable throughout the country. This implies that people, especially those from the lower income bracket, cannot avail of clean drinking water, since these have to be bought. Repugnant as it may sound, it is a reality that millions of Indians queue up everyday at public taps for one of life's most precious commodity — water." -ADB

Wednesday, 9 December 2009

Water Sector - Policies, laws and finance


Key Messages


Effective policy and legal frameworks are necessary to develop, carry out and enforce the rules and regulations that govern water use and protect the resource.

Water policy operates within a context of local, national, regional and global policy and legal frameworks that must all support sound water management goals.

Legitimate, transparent and participatory processes can effectively mobilize input for designing and implementing water resources policy and create a strong deterrent to corruption.

Although water is often described as a ‘gift of nature’, harnessing and managing it for the wide variety of human and ecological needs entail financial costs.

While there may appear to be many financing options for water resources development, governments still have only three basic means of financing them: tariffs, taxes and transfers through external aid and philanthropy.

Policy-makers need to make political decisions on socially and environmentally acceptable trade-offs among different objectives and on who bears the costs of such compromise.

Source:WWDR3


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Disclaimer: This Blog is a small step towards building a knowledge-based platform for Professionals interested in "water resources management(WRM)". One of the objective is knowledge dissemination. Please note that VIEWs expressed here are purely personal.