ADB: Reducing lost water could bring water to millions in Asia

Published on by in Government

ADB: Reducing lost water could bring water to millions in Asia

A new study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) finds that millions of people inAsiaand thePacificcould have access to clean water if leaks were plugged and water utility reforms adopted.

"While Asia and the Pacific is increasingly facing a major water crisis, we see unacceptable levels of water being lost through leaks and inefficiencies," said Bindu Lohani, ADB's Vice President for Knowledge Management and Sustainable Development. "By cutting the amount of lost water in half, 150 million people could be supplied with treated water."

ADB estimates that 29 billion cubic meters of water is lost each year in the region -- enough to fill more than 11 million Olympic-sized swimming pools -- causing Asia's water utilities to lose more than $9 billion in revenue each year.

By examining eight of the best-performing water utilities in Asia, Good Practices in Urban Water Management concludes that a low rate of unaccounted for water (UFW) is critical for efficient service delivery. While current UFW levels in the region are as high as 60%, an UFW level of less than 20% is a realizable goal. In fact, it notes that Phnom Penh managed to bring its lost water rate down to just 6% in 2008.

Read more:http://j.mp/NCLnvT

Media

4 Comments

  1. The water crises all over the globe in general and particularly in developing countries should be in two ways such as: 1. To store the rainwater either on surface or sub-surface with community initiatives and 2. To manage the water resources efficiently with innovative ways for agriculture like drip irrigation and by minimizing the risks of getting polluted. The second phase certainly controls the leakages which are alarming.

  2. The major consumption of river water is agriculture. Therefore if ADB is willing to frame reform policies in water sector, it should try to reduce wastage of water in agriculture sector. In India major wastage of water is in field channels ( called water courses in India) and farmer's field. This fact has not been noticed by the governments and financial institutions or they are not willing to work to improve water use efficiency in field channels and farmers field. They are self charmed by the idea of drip or sprinklers. The problem now is that the people sitting at the top of organizations, have no desire to know the ground realities and work accordingly. They go by slogans like roof top water conservation or IWRM or any other new slogan. The proper pricing of water is essential to provide water to starving people. The drinking water is used for irrigating lawns and other wasteful uses. The proper pricing of water, higher cost per unit for higher consumption will be reasonable, with little cost for low consumption. The other issue is water meters gets out of order in a short time after installation. A new technique for water meters should be adopted , so that they may not get out of order in a short time, as compared to electricity meters.

  3. This is a challenging issue due to heavy investment needed to replace and rehabilitate old pipelines and water meter.To achieve the minimum percentage of water loss around 20% will take quite a long time to realise. However what I want to emphasize is that most Financial Institution ( Banque Africain de Development ) are not willing to interfere in water network replacement because the water tariff is low and disappropriate in regards to recover the huge investment made. As it is a political and social problem to fix the correct Water Tariff no Authorities is willing to bring the water tariff to its actual cost, therefore it hinders the progress of Non Revenue water to realise according to my own experience and research done on this project.