Built water storage in South Asia

This program will address one of South Asia’s most pressing development challenges: enhancing water security through better planning and management of, and greater regional cooperation around, natural and built water storage systems. As emphasized by the recent “White House Action Plan on Global Water Security,” water security is essential for sustained economic growth. Water storage in South Asia is insufficient to meet current, let alone future, demand for water, given the variability in rainfall and impacts of climate change. Further, the benefits and risks derived from its distribution and availability are deeply unequal within and between countries: large segments of both urban and rural populations, especially women, the poor, and people from disadvantaged communities, suffer from serious water deprivation. Additionally, there are interstate tensions over the management of shared river basins. Water insecurity, exacerbated by climate change, has contributed to conflict within and between countries in other regions of the world. Given this background, the program will work closely with national governments and other stakeholders to enhance water security through more integrated water storage planning and management. To this end the program will:

1. Increase understanding of gaps in water storage needs in the context of climate change and integrated water resources management (IWRM).
2. Increase national and regional capacity to address these gaps and optimize water security.
3. Build capacity for IWRM, including data collection and modeling, to address water management challenges with a focus on storage gaps.
4. Promote transboundary cooperation to address gaps in water storage needs by facilitating cross-border and regional dialogue to promote greater cooperation to achieve mutual water security goals.
5. Analyze the roots of the substantial “gender gap” among technical staff and decision-makers and identify and promote ways to overcome this gap.
6. Develop and promote solutions to address gaps in water storage and unequal access to it.