Friday 1 December 2017

Valuing water for sustainable development - new article in Science

I am delighted to share the news that I have published an article in Science, under lead author Dustin Garrick of Oxford University, and as part of a team of authors whose sheer brilliance overwhelms me. 

The article explores the way in which water is valued, and the need to rethink our current approaches to valuing and managing water in response to:
(1) the need to invest approximately $114 billion over the next 12 years to meet the UN SDG 6 (universal access to safe water for sanitation and drinking, with healthy water ecosystems)
(2) improvement in technology for measuring and managing water
(3) institutional and governance failures, especially in the context of the rapidly rising economic value of water trading (as anyone who watched Lateline in Australia last week will have been reminded!), and
(4) the changing legal status of rivers, as the law begins to reflect the enormous cultural and environmental value of river systems to human communities.

The article proposes a new way to value water for sustainable development:



More detail on the work that led to this publication, including quotes from Dustin, Richard Damania at the World Bank, and me, can be found in this press release.