{"id":459457,"date":"2010-03-22T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T15:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/economics\/2010\/03\/22\/how-much-for-a-drink-of-water\/"},"modified":"2010-03-22T11:00:02","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T15:00:02","slug":"how-much-for-a-drink-of-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/459457","title":{"rendered":"How Much for a Drink of Water?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conserving fresh water is becoming increasingly important around the globe, a new report from the World Bank<\/strong>\u0092s internal evaluation group says, so the World Bank should encourage countries to charge for water. <\/p>\n

\u0093Growing water scarcity is a reality, which the Bank and its partners need to confront by putting more emphasis on the challenging areas of groundwater conservation, pollution reduction, and effective demand management,\u0094 writes the evaluation group\u0092s chief, Vinod Thomas<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The Independent Evaluation Group<\/strong> reviews World Bank programs in a manner similar to the way the Government Accountability Office<\/strong>, a Congressional unit, reviews U.S. government programs. <\/p>\n

While the evaluation report generally lauds the World Bank\u0092s water projects, it says the Bank has fallen short on cost recovery. Just 15% of the Bank projects that attempted \u0093any cost recovery actually achieved what they set out to do, and only 9% of the projects that attempted full cost recovery were successful,\u0094 the evaluation group found. Projects usually try to recover costs by increasing water bills. <\/p>\n

The inability to get people to pay higher rates \u0093has raised concerns about sustainability\u0094 in water projects, the report further argues. <\/p>\n

Sometimes, increasing the water bill backfires. In Tanzania, the report noted, there is widespread acceptance of the idea of paying for water. But so many fees are now being tacked on there was concern \u0093the poor were becoming overtaxed by their benefactors.\u0094 <\/p>\n

World Bank management published a response that says, essentially, it isn’t as easy as you think to get people anywhere to pay for water. \u0093Achieving full cost recovery in water services delivery is an ultimate goal, which although desirable economically is difficult and rarely achieved in practice,\u0094 World Bank management said.<\/p>\n

Globally, about 39% of utilities set their rates too low even to cover basic operations and maintenance, the World Bank said. An additional 30% set their rates below the level \u0093required to make any contribution\u0094 to paying for capital costs.<\/p>\n

Even in high-income countries, World Bank management said, only half of water utilities charge enough to cover operating costs.<\/p>\n

The result: \u0093While raising tariffs to recover a greater share of costs\u0085 may be economically sound,\u0094 World Bank management said, \u0093political constituencies have often prevented tariffs from being increased.\u0094 Indeed, the Bank\u0092s management says that some developing countries may have to raise their rates by 90% to fully pay for projects<\/p>\n

The Bank says it hasn\u0092t given up and wants projects to recover at least operating costs, but it\u0092s also looking at new water technologies and other options to reduce the cost of water delivery.<\/p>\n

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Conserving fresh water is becoming increasingly important around the globe, a new report from the World Bank\u0092s internal evaluation group says, so the World Bank should encourage countries to charge for water. \u0093Growing water scarcity is a reality, which the Bank and its partners need to confront by putting more emphasis on the challenging areas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":850,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/850"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}