The Asia Water Development Outlook – a flagship publication by the Asian Development Bank - monitors progress in water security in the Asia Pacific region. For the first time, the 2020 edition documents financing flows that contribute to – or that are needed to enhance – water security in...

This report takes stock of agriculture and water policy changes from 2009 to 2019 and assesses the alignment of these changes with relevant sections of the OECD Council Recommendation on Water and the 2017 G20 Agriculture Ministerial Action Plan on water and food security. The analysis builds on...

Where they exist, tariffs for water supply and sanitation services face a tension between different policy objectives, such as ensuring the financial sustainability of service provision and ensuring access to all, including vulnerable and poor social groups. Governments (local and national)...

Water security is a matter of great national importance for Kazakhstan, with its Security Council meeting on 26 June 2019 devoted to “Ensuring Water Security”. This paper presents recent progress in Kazakhstan with regard to identifying water security priorities and establishing indicators...

This paper identifies over 50 000 patents filed worldwide in various water-related adaptation technologies between 1990 and 2010, distinguishing between those related to water availability (supply) and water conservation (demand) technologies. The paper then analyses the innovation activity –...

Global freshwater demand is projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, making water one of the most fiercely contested resources on the planet. Water is linked to many economic activities, and there are complex channels through which water affects economic growth. The purpose of...

This study was one of the first attempts to evaluate and quantify the benefits of transboundary co-operation between Georgia and Azerbaijan. A specific framework for inventorying these benefits, taking into account all the different dimensions of transboundary water management, was built and...

The post-World War II era has witnessed a drastic increase in irrigation activities that have contributed substantially to the massive growth in agricultural production that enables humanity to feed its doubling population. However, a distinction has to be made between the overall positive...

New technologies allow perfect detection of environmental violations at near-zero marginal cost, but take-up is low. We conducted a field experiment to evaluate enforcement of water conservation rules with smart meters in Fresno, CA. Households were randomly assigned combinations of enforcement...

Water-related risks are intrinsically linked to both climate and nature challenges and can be closely tied to socio-economic challenges, such as poverty, food security, and domestic and international conflicts. There is increasing evidence that water-related risks are financially material across...