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A water-secure worldwww.iwmi.org
Water Aspects of Regional Development
Matthew McCartney IHA Congress 2015
Beijing
www.iwmi.org
A water-secure world
Water and development • Regional development and availability of water are
strongly interrelated
• Advances in water related engineering, technology and management have been central to progress in human development.
• Today water remains central to many aspects of socio-economic development – key to energy and food production (nexus) and other areas of human endeavor.
• With the advanced engineering, the scale of human interventions has increasingly shifted from local to regional scale
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A water-secure world
Value systems
The way water is managed inevitably relates to the value systems of society. Today widely promoted principles are:
• Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) • Sustainable development• Water security
All highlight the need for regional cooperation in relation to the management and use of water. Increasingly important in a world of greater demand, increasing scarcity and increasing uncertainty.
Photo: Matthew McCartney / IWMI
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A water-secure world
Cooperation Assumption: sustainable water resources development and management can only be achieved through better coordination of increasingly complex and multiple use of water
In transboundary basins requires: - integration - across sectors and scales (local to supranational)- countries planning and working together (coherent policies) built on
common understanding of river function and hydrology- sharing the costs as well as the benefits of water resource
development
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A water-secure world
Challenges
• Different and changing priorities stemming from demographic and other differences – conflicting development plans (upstream:downstream Nile)
• Sectoral fragmentation of water management at national and sub-national level (Scalar disconnect: Mekong)
• Complex geopolitical reality: i) power asymmetry; ii) the nation state is not the only actor in international relations
• Insufficient data and understanding.
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A water-secure world
Private Sector Investment in Hydropower (PPP)
Requires: strong regional cooperation – facilitates electric-power exchange and provides confidence to investors
Benefits: - potential to lever financing that is difficult
for governments to access (e.g. FDI) - transfer and sharing of financial risk to
private sector investors?- Potential efficiencies and innovation gains
Photo: Matthew McCartney / IWMI
www.iwmi.org
A water-secure world
Challenges
• Opportunities for investors to profit through construction or service supply may incentivize investments with weak returns.
• Governments with weak capacity may absorb risks and provide private sector guarantees such as supplying security, water flows, fuel, or electricity.
• Complexity can result in a range of environmental, socio-economic, financial, and political risks being undervalued, overlooked, or misidentified.
• Business norms tend to impede project transparency and participatory processes
www.iwmi.org
A water-secure world
Thank you
Photo: Matthew McCartney / IWMI
