Biologically diverse ecosystems in countries served by the World Bank provide an array of valuable economic services. While the benefits of conserving ecosystems frequently outweigh the costs, conversion of these ecosystems to other uses occurs anyway, because many ecosystem benefits are of a...

The new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) at its core. A dedicated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 6) declares a commitment to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." Monitoring progress toward this...

This case study provides evidence of the possibilities for attracting private sector engagement in piped rural water systems, and also clearly lays out some of the on-going sustainability challenges. There is an important learning opportunity for the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa to develop similar...

This diagnostic report was prepared by the World Bank to support its water sector dialogue with the Government of Romania. It aims to provide stakeholders, especially from the Romanian Government and the European Commission, with a comprehensive stock-taking of the situation in the Romanian...

The costs of meeting the SDG WASH targets will be several times higher than investment levels during the MDG era (2000-15). The immense scale of the financing gap calls for innovative solutions. In addition to mobilizing more funding another approach is to deliver the needed infrastructure more...

The objective of this report is to better understand the challenges of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 6.1 from the perspective of off-grid services currently being used by a large and increasing proportion of the urban population. For this assessment, two key distinct areas with high...

Today about 676 million urban residents, many of them poor, do not have access to the Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) definition of "safely managed" water supplies. They receive an off-grid water supply service that is not safely managed, accessible, or affordable, and thus not compliant with...

The study described in this policy brief quantified the impacts of water shocks (too much, too little and too dirty) on economic outcomes in Colombia, using combined hydrological and econometric modeling, and offers recommendations for putting the country on the path to water security (see...

This paper presents the findings of an impact evaluation to assess the performance and sustainability of the demand responsive community-based approach toward rural water supply in the state of Kerala, India. To achieve the study's objectives, conceptual definitions of the "performance" and...