Water Management a developmental priority for the region

There is a call for every country in the region to place water management at the top of its list of development priorities.

This is according to President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Dr. Warren Smith, in his address to the 22nd annual conference of the ‘Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association’s recently held at the Hilton Barbados Resort.

He pointed out that managing and securing access to water and sanitation for all is, perhaps, the biggest challenge facing Caribbean leaders and, indeed, all world leaders today.

“All of the key development challenges facing our Region, including energy generation and usage; food security; natural disaster management; and environmental protection are closely linked to effective water management.

“If we accept that water is a key driver of economic and social development, then water managers … must lead the charge to find new and innovative approaches to address the formidable challenges facing the sector. Primary among these challenges are inadequate tariff structures; inefficient water supply networks; and inadequate access in rural communities. We can also add to this list inadequate wastewater management systems coverage; weak data management capacity for water resource management; high per capita usage; and a shortage of capacity, especially in the areas of planning and risk management,” he highlighted.

The president also indicated that the water and sanitation sector is one of the keys to the achievement of our development mandate. He went to reveal that in the past four decades, CDB has placed an estimated US$120 million into the sector.

“Currently, we have ongoing interventions in Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, and St. Lucia. Water will continue to be a centre piece of the Bank’s development assistance over the medium term.”

Dr. Smith further revealed that rainfall data for the last 40 decades point to a decline in freshwater availability.

“We note this trend, especially in the northern Caribbean, where the decline was by as much as 50 per cent in some countries. When we compared per capita consumption in the Caribbean with that of similar regions of the world, it was 50 per cent higher than expected. In addition, unaccounted-for water across this Region ranged from 17 per cent to 66 per cent,” he noted. (TL)