Water is life. But it¡¯s also food, jobs, hygiene, electricity ¨C and the backbone of every economy.
Davit Mkrtchyan, a senior Armenian water sector official, knows that all too well.
¡°Water is more than a utility,¡± said the deputy chairman of the Water Committee of Armenia who oversees the coordination of water supply and wastewater management policies. ¡°It¡¯s life, dignity and opportunity.¡±
Mkrtchyan commented at a Vienna Development Knowledge Center workshop specifically tailored to countries in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) that ¨C like Armenia ¨C are facing challenges as they seek to strengthen their water supply and sanitation sectors amid a growing need for climate resilience and adaptation.
The May 12-13 ¡°Vienna Water Knowledge Flow¡± event also drew delegations from Albania, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan and T¨¹rkiye, with water practitioners and experts from Bulgaria, Portugal and the World Bank playing a pivotal part in a series of interactive, solutions-oriented sessions.
Looming large over ECA is the prospect of dwindling water supplies due to climate change coupled with a projected jump in demand by 2050, as highlighted in the World Bank report ¡°A Blueprint for Resilience: Charting the Course for Water Security in Europe and Central Asia¡± (December 2024).
For many of the countries taking part in the workshop the situation is already acute due to broader water sector issues and shortfalls in basic services such as access to drinking water and sewage treatment.
For example, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) figures on water show that only 39 percent of Central Asia¡¯s wastewater is collected and less than a quarter ¨C 24 percent ¨C is treated. At the country level, such as in Tajikistan, those numbers can drop even further, with 24 percent of wastewater collected and a mere 5 percent treated.
Common challenges
Amid this backdrop, the workshop gave participants the opportunity to share knowledge on their reform journey while hearing from World Bank experts on how to optimally organize and regulate the water services sector, sparking valuable exchanges and extensive Q&A sessions.
Topics covered included:
- why and how to regulate
- water and sanitation service delivery models
- aggregation ¨C the consolidation of water service provider activities under a shared organizational structure
¡°What I realized from the presentations is that the challenges we deal with are similar ¨C and the solutions seem to be very similar,¡± said Muhammed ?mran Kulat, deputy head of department at T¨¹rkiye¡¯s General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works.
Central Asian representatives, meanwhile, pointed to outdated Soviet-era water infrastructure as a pervasive problem, as well as access disparities between urban and rural areas, an uneven distribution of water resources and cost questions.