Knowledge

The knowledge created by World Bank projects related to water, curated and distributed by the Water Global Practice and the Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership (GWSP) finds its way into more than 50 major publications a year, some with partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and WaterAid

Recent flagship reports have examined the relationship between water and economic growth by taking a hard look at the water crisis and the impacts of pollution (Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis), scarcity (Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability) or climate change (High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy).

Emerging solutions include nature-based infrastructure (Integrating Green and Gray: Creating Next Generation Infrastructure), managing resources at the level of river basins, including transboundary, or approaches put forth by global diagnostics, which combine rigorous analytical frameworks with lessons learned from rich case studies: Water Scarce Cities: Thriving in a Finite World is, for example, a key initiative which spearheaded an expanding collection of Water Security Diagnostics.

The same approach delivered evidence-based recommendations for Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene interventions in seventeen countries, captured in a series of WaSH-Poverty diagnostics. These diagnostics are completed by a growing body of knowledge on Citywide Inclusive Sanitation and the circular economy of wastewater management, new reports on nutrition-sensitive WSS interventions and strategies for inclusive service delivery such as The Rising Tide: A New Look at Water and Gender and Women in Water Utilities: Breaking Barriers. Taken together, these analytical pieces directly contribute to the World Bank’s Human Capital Project.

Recognizing the challenges of delivering sustainable and resilient services in an inclusive manner, the Water GP finally developed interrelated think pieces on improving water institutions and mobilizing finance for development in the water sector (notably: Reform and Finance for the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Sector and Aligning Institutions and Incentives for Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation Services or Doing More with Less: Smarter Subsidies for Water Supply and Sanitation), which, in turn, constitute the backbone of global diagnostics.