Water infrastructure in Asia: financing and policy options

ABSTRACT

How should the world deal with the problem of insufficient water infrastructure financing? Here we attempt to answer this question in the context of Asia. We estimate investment needs in water infrastructure to meet the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to be in the range of US$120–330 billion/year until 2030, compared with current investment of US$40–50 billion/year. Closing this financing gap is not just a matter of spending more, but also spending with greater quality and efficiency considering competing national policy goals and the distinctive characteristics of water infrastructure that make its financing more challenging.

KEYWORDS:

• Water infrastructure
• financing
• water security
• Asia
• water sector finance

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Julie Rozenberg for guidance on the use of Beyond the Gap’s database. All errors and omissions remain our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2022.2062707.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The funding from these institutions is gratefully acknowledged. The findings, interpretations and conclusions in this paper do not reflect the views of IWMI, AIIB or the authors’ current employers.