This paper discusses a series of discusses how web sites now report international water project information, and maps the combined donor investment in more than 6000 water projects, active since 1995.
The maps show donor investment:
• has addressed water scarcity,
• has improved access to improvised water resources,
• correlates with growth in GDP,
• appears to show a correlation with growth in net private capital flow,
• does NOT appear to correlate with growth in GNI.
Evaluation indicates problems in the combined water project portfolios for major donor organizations:
•difficulties in grouping projects over differing Sector classifications, food security, or agriculture/irrigation is the most difficult.
• inability to map donor projects at the country or river basin level because 60% of the donor projects include no location data (town, province, watershed) in the title or abstracts available on the web sites.
• no means to identify donor projects with utilization of water resources from training or technical assistance.
• no information of the source of water (river, aquifer, rainwater catchment).
• an identifiable quantity of water (withdrawal amounts, or increased water efficiency) is not provided.
• differentiation between large scale verses small scale projects.
Recommendation: Major donors need to look at how the web harvests and combines their information, and look at ways to agree on a standard template for project titles to include more essential information. The Japanese (JICA) and the Asian Development Bank provide good models.
Optimal water management and conflict resolution: The Middle East Water Project
