World Water Day

  Significant values can be attributed to ecosystem services that relate to supporting resilienceor reducing risks. In 2019, environment-related risks accounted for three of the top five risks by likelihood and four of the top five by impact. Most disaster risks and costs are water-related . The value of nature’s contribution to people outstrips other economic values. One estimate of the notional economic value of nature’s contribution to people was US$125 trillion per year in 2011, around two-thirds higher than global GDP at that time. Only the water-related services provided by nature are valued at US$29 trillion per year (Costanza et al., 2014). The costs of inaction, in terms of ecosystem loss and degradation, are high. As reported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “between 1997 and 2011, the world lost an estimated US$4–20 trillion per year in ecosystem services owing to land cover change and US$6–11 trillion per year from land degradation. By 20...

  In 2017, 5.3 billion people (71% of the global population) used a safely managed drinking water service – one located on premises, available when needed and free from contamination. 3.4 billion people (or 45% of the global population) used safely managed sanitation services – an improved toilet or latrine that is not shared, from which excreta are safely disposed of in situ or treated off-site. Each year, it is estimated that approximately 829,000 people die from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking water , sanitation and hand hygiene. These causes represent 60% of all deaths due to diarrhoea globally, including nearly 300,000 children under the age of five, 5.3% of all deaths in this age group.  Poor sanitation and hygiene , as well as unsafe drinking water, cause diarrhoeal disease and environmental enteropathy, which inhibit nutrient absorption, resulting in undernutrition. Roughly 50% of all malnutrition is associated with repeated diarrhoea or intestinal worm inf...

  The development of overarching frameworks such as the 2000 European Union Water Framework Directive  demonstrates the increasing significance that is being placed on valuing water . Nonetheless, efforts to value water , especially in a transboundary context, remain limited in scope and often use different approaches. The discernible approaches to valuing water quantitatively in the transboundary context are more targeted on specific aspects of managing transboundary water resources , such as flood management , disaster risk reduction (DRR) , early-warning systems (EWS) and ecosystem services . Investment in data collection systems is recognized as being of vital importance and while it comes at an additional cost, that cost can be compensated by the benefits of effective cooperation. The 2017 joint Adelphi and Regional Environmental Centre for Central Asia study noted that “it is important not to neglect the indirect costs of suboptimal water management because they demo...