Driving Development by Investing in Water

The report establishes a poverty-focused investment priority list: Improve access to safe water supply and basic sanitation, and hygiene including household water management (these investments have the highest immediate economic returns); Protect the integrity of aquatic and water-related terrestrial ecosystems; and Invest in water-resource management including, where feasible, hydraulic infrastructures such as dams, irrigation schemes and flood control works.

“The world water and sanitation crisis is, in reality, an opportunity from a social and economic perspective,” says SIWI Executive Director Anders Berntell. “Yes, solving it would be expensive. But it would save far more than it cost, it would unlock huge potential, and it would transform countless lives.