Titled ‘Drought Impact Monitoring: Baseline Review of Practices’ and released under the banner of the Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP) – a joint initiative of the WMO and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) – the report presents a global overview of current drought impact monitoring practices, highlighting case studies and identifying examples of good practice and enabling environments that support effective monitoring.

The report provides operational guidelines to help countries establish or refine their drought monitoring systems and encourages cross-sector collaboration, open databases and tools to improve data accessibility, and tailored systems that can be adapted to local needs.

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The ‘2025 Snow Update Report’ published by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal, finds that the region experienced its third consecutive below-normal snow year in 2025, with snow persistence (the fraction of time snow is on the ground after snowfall) falling to a 23-year record low of -23.6%.

With nearly two billion people across 12 major river basins relying on seasonal snowmelt from the region, the report’s authors are calling for immediate targeted actions towards adaptive water resource management at basin-level to mitigate impacts on agriculture, hydropower generation, and other vital ecosystem services.

The report finds the most concerning declines in snow persistence impacting the Mekong (-51.9%) and Salween (-48.3%) basins, followed by the Tibetan Plateau (-29.1%), the Brahmaputra (-27.9%), Yangtze (-26.3%), and the Ganges (-24.1%) basins.

The report highlights the need for adaptive infrastructure, including seasonal storage systems, water efficiency measures, national preparedness and response plans, along with national water strategies for hydropower, agriculture, and allied sectors, and a strengthening of evidence-based decision-making and sectoral coordination.

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Accordingly, spending on waste water treatment chemicals is likely to rise over the coming years, more so than recent growth recorded in the industry.

The paper, commissioned by 6Wresearch, identified several factors that are contributing to the fast progression of the market. It sighted increasing water scarcity and a growing population combined with various prospective commercial and residential projects which were powering demand for waste water treatment chemicals in South Africa.

“Upcoming projects, such as US$249 million Water Treatment Plant for Gauteng and US$416 million Desalination Plant Project, would increase the demand for waste water treatment chemicals in the country,” said Nikhil Jat of 6Wresearch.

“Moreover, in the 2019 national budget, the South Africa government has allocated US$4.2 billion for human settlements, water and electrification programs. Significant rise in spending on water related schemes and projects would have a positive impact on the growth of the waste water treatment chemicals market in South Africa during the forecast period.”

The Western Cape is expected to maintain its position as market leader in South Africa, due to several large projects in the pipeline such as the Western Cape Water Supply System Augmentation Project.

Devesh Kumar, Research Associate at 6Wresearch, believes it is also innovation which is driving growth in the sector.

“Leading players are introducing new and innovative products in the waste water treatment domain as well as due to dependency of the country over treated water, the market for waste water treatment chemicals in the country would grow at a healthy rate over the next six years.”

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The document finds that areas such as north-east Scotland, Ayr and Irvine had sufficiently low water levels to justify being moved to the highest level of alert.

“North East Scotland, North Highland and the Clyde, Ayr and Irvine have moved to Significant Scarcity due to evidence of ecological impacts resulting from a protracted period of exceptionally low flows,” it states.

“It will require at least a month of rainfall significantly wetter than normal to alleviate the current water scarcity.”

Although heavy rain spells have occurred across parts of the country during the current UK heat wave, it has not been abundant enough to alleviate the very low river levels across Scotland.

Lower river levels have meant an increasing area of river bed is becoming exposed and in parts of rivers where there is water, it is shallow and slow-flowing. The report emphasised the environmental impact this has.

“These conditions have also led to some high river water temperatures, all of which put stress on river plants, fish and other animals.”

Scottish Water has advised citizens to use water “wisely”. Forecasts are unclear as to whether there will be enough inland rainfall to improve the scarcity situation in the country.
“It is highly likely that by the end of July, Scotland will have had the driest six-month period (Feb –Jul) since 1984,” the document commented.

Despite this, normal public water supplies have not yet been affected. The agency plan on coordinating efforts to manage resources consistent with measures outlined in Scotland’s National Water Scarcity Plan.

“By taking the right steps now, businesses that abstract water can help make the water supplies on which they and others depend last as long as possible through this period.”

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Back in 2004, the founders of Facebook launched their service to a select group of university students. Fourteen years later and the social network platform has 2 billion users per month, revolutionising how we communicate and interact. For the water sector, these numbers and impact resonate: the Sustainable Development Goal target to provide universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2030 is thirteen years away from today, and the gap we need to bridge is just above the 2 billion mark for both safe drinking water and adequate sanitation. Achieving this will revolutionise the lives of everyone who receives these services for the first time in their lives.

The usefulness of the comparison probably ends there, but it is striking to understand what can be achieved, at scale, in a relatively short space of time.

Targets within SDG6, the water goal, have two time horizons: 2020 for the protection and restoration of water-related ecosystems, and 2030 for the rest. Many people are skeptical about reaching such ambitious targets in this timeframe, notwithstanding the huge investments required to make it happen. But we have to be clear that the imperative is to make demonstrable progress, step-by-step. Transformational change will take decades.

Former US President, Bill Clinton, once said, “follow the trend lines, not the headlines”, which is instructive way of approaching the water and sanitation challenge of SDG6. We shouldn’t get too hung up on the timeframe–yes, it gives some urgency and impetus, but focus should be on locking in policies and practices that put us on the right track. We don’t have to look too far to find examples of such policies and practices:

• Improving access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation requires policies that embrace inclusivity and other dimensions of the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation; as well as practices that focus on risk management and mitigation, such as water safety plans and sanitation safety plans.
• Reducing the amount of untreated wastewater requires policies that enable and incentivise wastewater reuse and practices that embrace the circular economy.
• Addressing water scarcity requires policies that enable water quality requirements for different uses, promoting efficient use and practices that reduce water losses.

Rather than fretting on the achievability of the targets in their given timeframe, a focus on the ways and means would be time better spent by water professionals. Critical to this will be collaboration. Meaningful collaboration amongst individuals, across sectors and systems, will be the pathway to success. IWA supports this collaboration through our Specialist Groups, Governing Members and Programmes–working with members, partners and the water community at large to contribute to supporting and promoting the SDGs.

The growth of Facebook over the last 13 years, and its capacity to influence politics, business and society, shows what can be achieved. So can we reach universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030? Yes, it can be done, but let’s not allow the scale and timescales of the challenge prevent us from action. Let’s just get on with it and collaborate.

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A few years ago I saw the CEO of an Australian water utility talk about managing water supply in a period of unprecedented water scarcity. She said a key element of the utility’s success in changing consumer behaviour and reducing per capita water usage was a broad and deep process of public participation. She also said that the process had been challenging, that it took a shift in company culture, and that done badly public participation could impede progress and undermine a utility’s message.

Imagine, then, that you work for a drinking water service provider. Your boss asks you to carry out public participation during an upcoming tariff revision, but the company has never done this before and there are no specific guidelines to help you be successful. Your colleagues may not take public participation seriously, and the public, your customers, are unlikely to be in favour of higher tariffs.

What do you do?

While we know that public participation is an important driving force for improving water services management, there is no “magic bullet”, no single technique or model to involve our customers and all interested parties in the decision-making process. What is considered appropriate needs to be decided case-by-case, and must consider specific cultural and institutional peculiarities.

Nevertheless, there are proven approaches to effectively incorporate public participation into tariff-setting. The ‘3 I’s of public participation framework’ can help you “unpack” public participation and improve decisions.

Back in our fictitious utility, your public engagement efforts, will also be undermined unless your colleagues who are responsible for drafting and revising tariffs, and your institutional counterparts who advise and approve tariffs, such as regulators and consumer bodies, find this process beneficial and welcome feedback from the public. In other words, public institutions that have stakes in the decision-making also need to support public participation.

Without this, the expectations raised by public participation will not be realised and trust in the process and company can be irreversibly lost. In our 3 I’s framework, integrating public participation into the tariff-setting process from the start, is the first thing to consider.

Next, we need to look to the public domain to identify the “public”. The “public” is never a homogeneous group. It consists of individuals and groups who have different interests and needs. Some may be supportive, some may be obstructive, some may be indifferent, and some may not yet have an opinion. Participants should not be labelled for their positions. Stances and nuances of their opinions may easily change during the course of open dialogues, learning and reflections.

The focus should not be on the position they hold–“for”, “against” or “neutral”–but rather on understanding the interests underlying those positions, which can uncover hidden concerns or problems. A careful approach is needed to understand those concerns and find ways to make progress.

Once you’ve identified your counterparts involved in tariff-setting process, and public stakeholder groups, it’s time to link the two through implementation planning. As the public participation planner, you need to find the When, Why and How of public participation, remembering that no size fits all. Applying different techniques for public participation at each stage of the decision-making process can help.

With some stakeholder groups, you may want to engage them in face-to-face discussions at an early stage. With others, social media may be an appropriate tool to obtain input once tariff proposals are ready. Importantly, techniques should be chosen to fit the objective of each stage in the decision-making process.

Ultimately, you may conclude that there’s no need for public participation given your local circusmtances. Thinking through each “I” can help you understand your needs before rushing to conclusions.

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Latin America’s contractual approach is helping to secure urban water supplies in the region. By James Workman

Two centuries ago, an orphan just back from European studies set out to unshackle the oppressed millions of South America. This progressive revolutionary shunned radical slogans. He disliked populist upheaval. Instead, Simón Bolívar transformed his native continent through a calculated, even conservative approach. Step by step, from town to city across Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Peru and his future namesake Bolivia, ‘the Liberator’ wrenched independence from Spain by appealing to the long-term self-interest of his fellow urban aristocrats. A similar appeal to self-interest is helping smart water professionals try to free thirsty millions from the threat of resource scarcity. Their new tools ignore sweeping Marxist manifestos, and instead seek incremental progress through water reforms based on Adam Smith’s markets, Voltaire’s logic, and Montesquieu’s laws.

The resulting tools go by many names: ‘basin contracts,’ ‘payments for water,’ ‘reciprocal watershared agreements,’ ‘compensation for hydrological services,’ or simply ‘water funds’. By pooling capital and expertise, they embody both the promise and peril of a new movement.

Let’s call it water’s Bolivarian revolution.

One of its leaders, Pablo Lloret, has emerged in Ecuador. During the 20th century, Latin American water was mostly an inanimate object, doled out as political patronage. It had no inherent worth and the devalued water resources left needy, high altitude cities like Quito at risk. So in 2000, Lloret advanced an audacious vision. He saw water as more than an environmental good or human right; it was an economic force unto itself.

Lloret estimated what it would cost to secure the upstream watershed, then developed a prospectus and used it to raise US$3.5 million from investors. He pitched his value proposition to the boardrooms of businesses, including the electrical utility and a brewing company, who saw it as a kind of insurance to protect long-term business assets from drying up. Then he suggested they pool their combined resources into what became the Water Protection Fund for Quito, or FONAG. By applying financial rationales, Lloret won his investment and set up payments for watershed services under an 80-year timeframe.

That victory led others to leverage, copy, and replicate its formula for success. From Mexico to Argentina, NGOs help design, plan and create these upstream-downstream, contractual negotiations over water. The Nature Conservancy, with its partners, has helped establish 29 trusts, with 30 more in development. TNC Regional Water Security Director Hugo Alberto Contreras says “water funds have become an effective alternative to fulfil institutional and regulatory gaps in Latin America, helping to attract public and private resources to source water protection.” His TNC colleague, Water Funds Specialist Alejandro Calvache, adds: “We’re learning to assess water according to monetary value for the services it provides.”

In Brazil, upstream landowners annually receive US$32 per acre to keep Atlantic forests intact. Others make more. Yet reform is never sudden or massive. Transactions quietly occur. Voluntary agreements reveal the scarcity value of a once ‘priceless’ resource. And trusts are proposed for cities as big as Santiago or São Paulo. Still, ideological and bureaucratic obstacles limit the pace and scope of water’s revolution. Liberals fear corporate influence taints the purity of public systems, while conservatives worry about corruption, lack of transparency, and where or how money gets spent.

Indeed, water funds may have reached an inflection point. They will flourish or wither depending on the level of infusions in political support, scientific trust, and private capital.

“With a few exceptions, most outcomes have been driven largely by philanthropic efforts,” says Todd Gartner, Manager, Natural Infrastructure for Water, World Resources Institute. “In coming years, expect more questions about return on investment, asking what constitutes success. If you look at the explosion of funds from 16 to 29 to 40 in a few years, yes, they’ve been successful. But when you actually look at investment secured, or the scale of acres treated, or the people involved, it’s a little bit more modest.”

Two centuries ago, Bolivar’s early efforts also faced setbacks. He scaled back an ambitious agenda to the distinct natural and socio-economic contours of each place. Water funds are adapting in a similar way.

One water trust dynamic is geographic scale. Large cities have more to spend, but few cheap landscapes to invest in. In Lima, Peru, second only to Cairo as earth’s biggest desert city, Aquafondo finances projects in the very distant upper Andean rivers of Rímac, Chillón and Lurín, which diminish as glaciers melt.

Population density brings another wrinkle. In the Bolivian village of Los Negros, downstream irrigators faced declining water quality and quantity as cloud forests upstream were being cleared for timber and agriculture, altering runoff patterns and worsening dry seasons. So they negotiated with upstream counterparts: every 10 hectares of forest conserved earns a beehive and training to produce honey.

 

A third factor is the type of threat. Outside the Costa Rican capital, the public utilities company of Heredia (ESPH) set out to protect its water supply from risks posed by urban sprawl and land use changes in the upper watershed. “This potential degradation threatened a valuable social and economic benefit obtained at a very low cost,” says Luis Gamez, of ESPH. In the 1990s Gamez and his colleagues pioneered “economic instruments to address expedite field actions.” He developed “a local and financially self-sufficient environmental services payment scheme, supported by water company customers, to protect and conserve the catchment area and water sources.”

A water revolution may take public or private shape, involve written or informal structures, cover big or small basins, or transact directly or through water utility tariffs and trusts. Yet all set up a collective impact mechanism that secures municipal water by investing in natural infrastructure. The late great Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom described these “self-organised management of the commons” as held together not by a centralised authority but by voluntary distributed contracts.

While simple in theory, upstream/ downstream water contracts are hard to execute. Self-managed commons need a Pablo Lloret or Luis Gamez, to unite divergent economic, social, and environmental interests to agree on a shared outcome. Few appreciate the challenges of this bottom-up process better than Nigel Asquith of Natura Bolivia.

Asquith, an Ostrom disciple, has spent two decades helping communities pioneer reciprocal ‘watershared’ agreements (RWAs) to protect clean “water factories”–the upstream forests of the Tropical Andes. His work targets “municipalities where the majority of inhabitants are rural, poor and minimally educated,” and at these scales, RWAs can involve a messy, noisy, arduous process, much like democracy itself. But the roots, once established, can spread out rapidly. Starting with the Los Negros model in 2003, those six farmers bartering to protect a 465-hectare basin “had mushroomed” to 40 towns in Bolivia alone, said Asquith, where 190,000 downstream users pay 4,500 upstream families to protect and conserve 210,000 hectares of water-producing forests.

Across 80 smaller Andean municipalities, this local watershed contract model has traction. In Colombia, the conservation group Rare is spreading it throughout the Valle de Cauca. In southern Ecuador, the FORAGUA water fund alliance of 30 municipalities has built it into its water conservation approaches.

Such traction is real and durable. But even advocates stress the challenge of scale. For big cities, “no one’s really cracked the aggregation nut,” as WRI’s Gartner puts it. To São Paulo, protecting 2,000 acres offers little more than positive public relations for utility operations. “You need 20,000 to 200,000 acres, and in a privately held watershed that means writing contracts with hundreds of thousands of landowners. If you can’t do that, you’re unlikely to get the scale of intervention for real economic returns.”

One ironic threat to water’s Bolivarian revolution comes from nationalists who claim Bolivar’s legacy. Policies of land dispossession have worsened the legacy of insecure land rights across Latin America, and inhibit water contracts. A related challenge is weak governance. “Regulatory and institutional gaps prevent the effective implementation of the model,” says TNC’s Contreras. “Some countries have no entity fully responsible for managing the watershed,” and those that do lack “technical or financial capacities to perform their regulatory, technical and investment functions.”

Healthy debate rages about where and how to invest in and rigorously measure long-term water security. Here, the Bolivarian revolution encourages experimentation. WRI’s Gartner is cautiously optimistic that accountability and compliance improves affordable new monitoring technology, like GPS, drones, and high-resolution satellite imagery. And Natura Bolivia is at the forefront of defining effective outcomes, by conducting “randomised controlled trials,” which test the efficacy per funds invested of one outcome (i.e. upstream forest protection) against a fixed standard or placebo.

Bolivar died in 1830 aged 47, frustrated at all the setbacks that came in the wake of his early victories. “All who served the revolution have ploughed the sea,” he lamented. His memory should take comfort. While the fate of contractual trusts and funds in Latin America may be uncertain, water’s Bolivarian revolution is spreading abroad with 100 such programmes already in Kenya, South Africa, Europe, and China.

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“If we think of water resources as a bank account, then the region is now seriously overdrawn,” said Hafez Ghanem, World Bank Vice President for the Middle East and North Africa. “Drawing water from rivers and aquifers faster than they can be replenished is equivalent to living beyond one’s means, and it undermines a country’s natural capital, affecting longer-term wealth and resilience. But there are solutions, and they start with clear incentives to change the way water is managed.”

Beyond Scarcity: Water Security in the Middle East and North Africa draws on regional and global examples to show that limited water resources need not restrict the region’s future, but that a combination of technology, policy and management can convert scarcity into security.

Offering a comprehensive analysis of one of the region’s most significant challenges, the report examines the sustainability and efficiency of current water resources management, the challenges to maintain and extend access to affordable water services, and the growth of water-related risks and the adequacy of the actions taken to address them.

“Along with better water management, there is room for increasing the supply through non-conventional methods such as desalination and recycling,” said Guangzhe Chen, Senior Director of the World Bank’s Global Water Practice. “Fortunately, many countries have demonstrated success in implementing innovative programmes to reduce the amount of treated water that is lost through leakages before it reaches the customer, as well as producing nonconventional water.”

Over 60 percent of the MENA region’s population lives in areas with high or very high surface water stress, compared to a global average of about 35 percent. Yet despite water scarcity, the region has the world’s lowest water tariffs and, at two percent, the highest proportion of Gross Domestic Product spent on public water subsidies.

Low service tariffs discourage efficient use of water. Increasing water service fees would signal the true value of the dwindling resources and encourage conservation. It can also provide financing for water resources protection, infrastructure maintenance, and ensuring equitable and reliable service delivery.

The potential for recycling has yet to be fully exploited in the region. Currently, more than half of the wastewater collected in the MENA region is returned to the environment untreated, resulting in both health hazards and wasted water resources.

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