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.
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.