ADB cites importance of water to economic growth

10/14/2010

Asian countries, including the Philippines, need to adopt best-in-class water treatment and distribution system if they want to sustain their economic growth, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Thursday.

“Harnessing used water will help lighten the need to transport large volumes of water over great distances," the Manila-based bank said in a study titled “Water Reuse: Scale, Technologies and Prospects."

“With lower energy consumption compared to desalination and increasing public acceptance, the market for water reuse is expected to grow exponentially," the study added.

The study — released in an ADB-organized conference (Water Crisis and Choices: ADB and Partners Conference 2010) in Manila — was authored by Tze Weng Kok, Xin Wei Wong, Sally Toh, Melanie Tan and Siong Teck Koh of Singapore’s national water agency.

The study examined the experiences of large-scale water reuse projects around the world, focusing on Singapore’s NEWater program that has gradually gained public acceptance since it was built to treat wastewater in 2003.

The ADB said the Singapore facility can now supply up to 30 percent of the island state’s entire water needs.

The bank said Singapore was able to incorporate successful public-private partnerships, with the water agency given full control over planning and management of water resources.

“Singapore has vested operational and decision-making responsibilities in the hands of a single agency and this is a critical step which allows holistic planning and management of water resources to meet both social and economic outcomes, as well as ensuring long-term water and environmental sustainability," the study said.

Another paper presented at the conference — “From Loss to Profit: Structural Transformation via Reduced Non-Revenue Water" — looks at what can be done to curb the frightening growth of non-revenue water or water that has been produced and is lost before it reaches the customer.

Reducing non-revenue water

The ADB said losses from leakage, inefficient collection, and theft are conservatively estimated at 30 to 60 percent of the utilities’ water inputs or 29 billion cubic meters a year. This translates to $9 billion worth of annual losses.

The losses stem from factors ranging from chronic underfunding, weak technical and managerial capabilities, and insufficient business autonomy, the ADB said.

These problems have been compounded by low water tariffs, which have left many utilities financially unviable, undermining service and coverage, the ADB added.

“Reducing the [non-revenue water] by half will enable another 150 million urban dwellers to be provided with safe water supplies," according to ADB’s Michael White and Rudolf Frauendorfer, authors of the paper.

With existing water supplies for cities under growing pressure from rising populations, and expanding commercial and industrial activities, the need to cut waste has become even more critical, the ADB said.

The study noted that local and national governments need to set their water agencies free and allow the corporate status that will give them the autonomy to plan and manage their businesses and to set tariffs that allow them to be more financially sustainable.

With the right management and political backing, public utilities have shown they can dramatically cut losses, the study noted, citing Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority slashing its non-revenue water from about 73 percent in 1993 to 6 percent in 2010.

The Hai Phong Water Supply Co. in Vietnam also reduced waste from 73 percent in 1993 to 25 percent in 2008, it added. — Jesse Edep/VS, GMANews.TV