About Us
Managing water and land in a more integrated way is critical to ensuring access to clean drinking water, reducing water pollution, protecting biodiversity, controlling flooding and food security.
Strategy
Over the past seven years since the World Bank’s Water Resource Strategy was created, the Bank’s water lending commitments have increased significantly, the quality of the water portfolio was turned around, and the outcome project rating now even out performs the Bank average. The 2010 mid-cycle implementation progress report, Water for All in a Changing Climate, and the Sustainable Infrastructure Action Plan continue to guide the Bank’s strategy for managing water resources.
The Water Practice at the World Bank
Organizational Charts explain how the water practice is structured at the World Bank.
Historical Lending charts provide data on water lending at the Bank by sector and region from Fiscal Year 2006 through Fiscal Year 2011.
Integrated Support
The World Bank is one of the few institutions provides integrated support nationally and regionally across the macroeconomic, financial, technical, social and environmental dimensions. It does this through by helping countries create sound water management practices that focus on getting the right policies in place, building the capacity of governments, technical assistance and analytic work.
Policy Advice: The Bank provides advice on water-related policies and programs through analytical and advisory work, policy dialogue and technical assistance. Analytic and advisory work includes Economic and Sector Work (ESW) which includes formal and informal studies of critical issues, either at the regional level, country level. This work is a key instrument Long-term strategic analyses of country sectors and for building institutional capacity.
Bank Task Team Leaders also provide flexible demand responsive tailored services through initiatives WET (part of the Water Partnership Program). Non-lending technical assistance also includes vehicles to share international “best practice”, exchange knowledge through workshops and conferences or how-to guides, surveys, etc and technical advice to support implementation of policies, programs or projects.
Capacity Building: The Bank’s support to countries focuses on a learning-by-doing approach that combines capacity building with investments along with technical assistance for institutional reforms.
In partnership with the Water & Sanitation Program, the World Bank has also created modules to support policymakers, government officials and service providers, Bank staff, development experts, donor representatives, academics, and non-governmental organizations. These modules include annotated slideshows, lecture notes, and handouts; videos and other tools.
Working with Partners and Communities: The World Bank increasingly works with partners from multilateral and bilateral agencies, but also agencies within civil society and the private sector at the global, regional, and country levels.
Partners include:
Global Water Partnership (GWP)
International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID)
International Water Association (IWA)
Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)
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