ISLAMABAD: The economies of Asia and the Pacific must put water security on top of their post-Covid-19 agenda and adapt to climate change, the Asian Develop­ment Bank (ADB) said in its Asian Water Development Outlook 2020.

Despite achievements in the Asia Pacific region over the last few decades, 1.5 billion people living in rural areas and 600 million in urban areas still lack adequate water supply and sanitation. Of the 49 ADB regional members, 27 face serious water constraints on economic development, and 18 are yet to sufficiently protect their inhabitants against water-related disasters, the report said.

The report stresses the need for these countries to increase their investment in water, sanitation, and other water-related infrastructure and services by convening all public, private, and innovative financing to achieve quality growth and the Sustainable Development Goals.

Financing is also needed to enable and sustain a virtuous system of good governance, which requires efficient water-related organisations with sufficient capacity and financial resources to enable them to provide coherent policies, monitor and evaluate progress, and take action when needed, all in interaction with the stakeholders in a transparent way.

In its key recommendation, the water outlook report suggests to put water at the center of sustainable rural development by promoting water-effective irrigation agriculture, community-based water and sanitation services, and locally resilient disaster risk reduction such as the combination of community protection and farmland flood retention.

This will enable a good economic circle of locally-affordable investment, income generation, proper management and operation, and an enhanced level of welfare for the people, the report says.

In other recommendations, the report asked the regional countries to achieve urban water security by investing in water, sanitation, and disaster risk reduction infrastructure services not only in cities but also in slums and peripheral areas, while following a gender-based approach.

Water security in Central and West Asia shows reasonable scores for countries of the former Soviet Union but rather weak for Afghanistan and Pakistan. All regions, except South Asia, show good progress in water-related disaster security. South Asia experienced some major disasters in the last 10 years, which influenced their score negatively.

Water security in South Asia is strongly influenced by the relatively low performance on rural household water security and urban water security. Progress in these dimensions was made during 2013-2020 but not enough to bring this region at the same level as East Asia and Southeast Asia.

The region also performs weakly on environmental water security but comparatively well on water-related disaster security. Progress of overall water security was made during 2013–2016 but did not continue during 2016–2020.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2020