Population and economic growth, as well as climate change, have pushed water crises to the top of the global agenda. Given the scale of the issues, delivering sustainable water management requires rapid mobilization of funding for water-related improvements and more effective use of existing resources. The Achieving Abundance Working Paper proposes a method whereby any decision-maker can calculate the cost required to deliver sustainable water management to a geography.
The working paper calculates the cost of action required to close the gap between current conditions and desired conditions to financially compare and prioritize different water-related challenges or different targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6. The paper also estimates the costs of delivering sustainable water management for all countries and major basins—estimated globally as US$1.04 trillion (2015$) annually from 2015 to 2030.
Statistics on global water challenges are daunting: 3 billion people don’t have basic handwashing facilities. A quarter of the world’s population live in countries facing extremely high water stress. There are more than 500 dead zones — areas of the ocean without enough oxygen for most marine life to survive — from untreated wastewater.
The solutions to world’s water crises, though, cost far less than you might think. New WRI research found that securing water for our societies by 2030 could cost just over 1% of global GDP —about 29 cents per person, per day from 2015-2030.
And the economic benefits outweigh the costs. Every dollar invested in water access and sanitation yields an average $6.80 in returns. The World Bank found that failing to implement better water management policies could result in regional GDP losses from 2-10% by 2050.
The paper analyzed what it could take to achieve a combination of six strategies that, taken together, can provide water security. We’ve named this desired end-state “sustainable water management” (see text box). Our definition of sustainable water management matches generally to UN Sustainable Development Goal number six (SDG 6), which calls for “access to water and sanitation for all” by 2030. We calculated the investments needed to tackle each of the six strategies in a given country.
We found that 75 countries can achieve sustainable water management at 2% or less of their annual GDP; 70 countries can get there with 2-8% of GDP; and 17 countries will require more than 8% of their GDP to solve their water problems.