The Asian Development Bank is to double its annual investment in water
provision and management to more than $2billion (£1.04bn). The decision
follows an estimate from the Asia Water Watch 2015 study – whose
sponsors included the bank and the World Health Organization – that the
region needed at least $8bn a year to provide safe drinking water and
sanitation alone.
The bank’s Water Financing Programme, building on five years’ work
under its Water for All policy, will be concentrated on infrastructure
improvements.
It will aim at improving access to safe drinking water and improved
sanitation for about 200 million people; more productive and efficient
irrigation and drainage, affecting 40 million people; reduced flooding
risks, affecting about 100 million people; integrated water resources
management in 25 river basins; and improved water governance through
national water sector reforms.
The bank also recently provided a $41million loan to improve
sustainable water supplies and sanitation for 1.6 million people in 16
Bangladeshi towns. The loan will back a $71.1m project to assist the
government in achieving its United Nations Millennium Development Goals
and poverty reduction targets.
The project is intended to provide sanitation for the whole population
by 2010, at the same time educating communities on the link between
hygiene and health and building community, school and public latrines.
At present 22 per cent of Bangladesh’s seven million tube wells are
contaminated with arsenic above the government’s stated safety level.
