Volume 1

Issue No. 1
December 2018

Urban Waters
How does water impact and is impacted by cities and human settlements?

A publication of the World Centre for Sustainable Development / RIO+ Centre

The World Center for Sustainable Development, RIO+ Center, is a partnership between the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Brazil. It was created in 2013 in Rio de Janeiro as a legacy of the Rio +20
Conference of 2012, by a wide range of founding institutions, such as the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. The mission of the Rio+ Center is to inform and inspire public policies and practices that lead to a more
just and sustainable world, using evidence, promoting a broad-based dialogue and developing actions in alliance with
other partners. One of the main objectives of the Center is to internationally promote the appropriation of a sustainable
development paradigm that encompasses the economic, social and environmental dimensions in an integrated way.

Director a.i.: Niky Fabiancic

Coordinator: Haroldo Machado-Filho

Editors:
Lorena Camarena, Haroldo Machado-Filho,
Lorenzo Casagrande, Rosaly Byrd,
Aikaterini Tsakanika, Sarah Wotton

Publications Manager:
Lorena Camarena

Art and Layout:

Cesar Perri

Cover photograph:
Ricardo Gomes, Instituto Mar Urbano

The views expressed in the Centre RIO+ Publications are solely

those of the authors and should not be taken as representing
the views of their respective institutions, the United Nations
Development Programme, or the Government of Brazil.

Rights and Permissions – All rights reserved.

The text and data in this publication may be reproduced as long

as the source is cited. Reproductions for commercial purposes
are forbidden.

Some of the photographs used in this publication are licensed

under the Creative Commons license; full attribution and links
to the individual licenses are provided for each.

Editors’ note:
We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all of the
authors for their generous and insightful contributions, without
which this Issue simply would not have been possible.
 Summary

Addressing Water Challenges And Urban Informality: 6

Lessons From Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: 11

Achieving The Urban Water SDGs

The Challenges Of Guanabara Bay In Rio De Janeiro: 14

A Showcase Of The Need For Integrated And Inclusive Source-To-Sea Urban Policies.

Urban Water Challenges Of India: 17

The Case Of Delhi

How Does Water Affect Cities And People? 20

The Case Of The Greater Paris Sanitation Utility (SIAAP)

Cities And Water Security: 23

The Role Of Local Governments

Managing Excessive Water Flows In Cities: 27

Nature-Based Solutions

Charging For The Use of Bulk Water In Rio De Janeiro: 31

Analysing A Sustainable Water Management System

Drainage Infrastructure In The Monterrey Metropolitan Area, Mexico: 35

The Case Of The Pluviales Project

photo: Rio+ Centre
Urban Waters
How does water impact and is impacted
by cities and human settlements?
This publication is aimed to be the first RIO+ Policy Briefs by
the RIO+ Centre with the purpose to discuss policy challenges
across the globe from an integrated perspective that
encompasses all dimensions of sustainable development
- economic, social and environmental - and to provide policy
recommendations to encourage the implementation of
solutions that support the achievement of the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) in an integrated manner.
This first issue of the Policy Briefs is devoted to “Urban
Waters” and the question how water impacts and is
impacted by cities and human settlements. The idea of
this publication emerged during the 8th World Water Forum,
held in Brasília, Brazil, in March 2018 where the Centre
promoted a panel on this topic at the parallel event “SDG
Planet”. Thus, this edition of the RIO+ Policy Briefs aims to
build upon some of the discussions and debates initiated
during the Forum.
Water is essential for human and animal life, for nature and
for the economy. As a resource and commodity, it has a
key function in our economic system, for food production,
hygiene and health, energy and education. Water also forms
biospheres and whole ecosystems such as rivers, lakes,
seas, oceans, bays and glaciers and is key for the planet’s
biodiversity and climate. The lack of water is the origin of
deserts, land degradation, poverty and human migration.
In cities or urban areas, water is often exclusively seen as
a means to serve our daily needs or taken for granted as
part of the landscape without much awareness about how
to assure its sustainability. Having entered a new era where
the majority of the population lives in urban areas and
where the growth of some cities continues at an accelerated
pace, the sustainable management and caretaking of urban
waters is key.
This publication aspires to discuss water in urban areas
not only in terms of water management, governance and
infrastructure, as well as their best practices, but also in
terms of challenges and opportunities of water bodies
as biospheres and ecosystems within and close to urban
agglomerations. It will present a variety of international
perspectives and examples, and focus on the integration
of economic, social and environmental dimensions of the
efforts described.
The briefs will be made available to policymakers, regulators,
sectoral experts, academia, civil society, and the media. We
hope it will be a timely contribution to the debate on how
human settlements and water resources can co-exist in
a sustainable manner, and that it will help spark further
discussion.
Niky Fabiancic, Director i.a. RIO+ Centre
 photo: M Kjellen

Addressing Water Challenges And Urban Informality: Lessons from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Marianne Kjellén, Senior Water Advisor, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Wilbard Kombe, Professor, Institute of Human Settlements Studies, Ardhi University
Gordon McGranahan, Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies (IDS)

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, a city of some 5 million residents,
has around 500 million litres per day of water pumped into
it. With about six households for every connection, the
last census indicates that only about a third have water
piped to their home or plot, almost a third have direct
access to wells, and about a third rely on communal taps
or water carted or trucked to their homes (see Table 1).
Many of these sources, including piped connections, are
intermittent or unreliable. As with many other services in
Dar es Salaam, most citizens, especially the urban poor, rely
on informal water supply sources and practices to meet
their daily needs and enabling a better future. These include
self-supply networks from privately dug deep boreholes.
Shallow wells are also used but largely for washing, cleaning
and gardening.
Informal settlement, informal water provisioning, and
the challenges and opportunities they pose for formal
water utilities
Informality of urban settlement and water provision is
pervasive in many parts of the world. Unfortunately, as
urban water utilities are purposed to deliver piped services
to people’s homes and workplaces according to well-defined
rules, they are not well suited to help people get the best out
of patchy piped systems and the wide range of alternative
and often informal means of providing services.
Informality refers to practices that are not condoned by
officialdom but are not criminal either (Post 2018; Sinha and
Kanbur 2012). Informal supply systems emerge where the
formally planned and officially recognised system – usually
piped – does not meet the needs of the water users. In many
areas where the majority do not have connections of their
own, some level of water service is provided through complex
combinations of self-provisioning, civil society initiatives,
private entrepreneurs, community organising, household
sharing, and public-sector projects and programmes. Often
the various water supplies, including those based on piped
water, are only intermittently available, and households
must rely on multiple sources and strategies.
Poverty-linked informality is almost inevitably an awkward
compromise; the sort of political settlement few would
openly approve of, with authorities implicitly accepting
practices that they cannot fully condone. Enforcing the
regulations that prohibit these informal practices are in
many contexts likely to make things worse. Informality
leaves people behind, but supressing informality through
stricter enforcement can actively exclude them from the
city. This is the case for access to basic services such as
potable water supplies or shelters.
Informality often breeds further informality, as land and
water development are closely interconnected. Informal
land development often takes place at a distance from
the piped water system, as that is where land is cheap,
and in this informal land development there is unlikely to
be any provision in the layout of the plots and houses for
their eventual connection. When the settlement density
increases in an irregular fashion, the options for piping
the neighbourhood and providing all homes or plots
with connections become increasingly constrained, with
important cost implications.

6
Informal systems display enormous innovation, but can Table 1 - Percentage distribution of households by main drinking
also exacerbate environmental and health risks, reinforce water source for Dar es Salaam Region, based on 2012 census
social inequalities and impose economic burdens especially
on the urban poor (Kombe and Kreibich 2006). This complex
combination is evident in the case of Dar es Salaam.

Water Development and Distribution in Dar es Salaam

Dar es Salaam’s population has for many years been

growing at over 5 per cent a year, with wards in the
periphery of the city growing at far higher rates. The Facilities Per cent of households (%)
city has tried to respond to the growing water demand
with large-scale transfers principally from the Ruvu River Piped water into dwelling 20.1
some 70 kilometres from the city (Kjellén and Kyessi 2014; Piped water to yard/plot 12.9
Nobert and Skinner 2016). Most of the infrastructure for Public tap / standpipe 18.8
transmission and distribution was built during the 1950s Tube well / borehole 18.9
and 1970s. The major urban expansion, however, has come Protected dug well 7.6
at a much later date. Funding in recent decades has mostly Unprotected dug well 4.2
been concentrated to maintain and expand abstraction, Protected spring 0.3
treatment and transmission capacity. Unprotected spring 0.2
Rain water collection 0.1
The formal piped system in Dar es Salaam directly serves Bottled water 1.2
about a third of the households – counted as those having Cart with small tank/drum 7.0
piped water into the dwelling or to the yard/plot – see Table Tanker truck 8.4
1. Another third relies mainly on boreholes, wells or springs. Surface water (river, dam, lake, etc) 0.1
These would typically be private sources of varying kinds
of self-supply, but there are also boreholes-cum-water TOTAL 100
kiosks operated by the Dar es Salaam Water and Sewerage Note: These are the “main” sources of drinking water, but households often use multiple
Authority (DAWASA). The final third have indirect access water sources.
to the other sources, relying mainly on public taps and Source: United Republic of Tanzania (2015: Table 6.1: Percentage Distribution of Private
standpipes – presumably including connected households Households by Headship, Geographical Location and Main Source of Drinking Water;
Tanzania, 2012 Census, Page 48)
reselling water or sharing with neighbours – and those
purchasing by the container from carts, or from tanker
trucks.
Connected households enjoy an average tariff of about 1,700
Tanzanian Shillings per cubic meter, roughly equivalent to
three quarters of one US dollar per cubic meter (EWURA
2017). This price is considerably lower than what households
who access water through resellers or vendors pay (See e.g.
Bayliss and Tukai 2011; Kjellén 2010).

The challenges and opportunities informality pose for

improving water services

There are two broad areas of concern where formal and

informal systems need to be harmonised if people are to
secure better water services in the short term without
compromising future water supplies, or severely limiting new
housing opportunities for the rapidly growing population.
The first relates to rapid informal urban expansion, meeting
important housing needs, but supporting rapid population
growth in areas where the groundwater aquifers are at
risk, and the costs of extending piped water supplies are
high. The second relates to the complex webs of informal
systems, including water pipes, kiosks and vendors, that are
serving critical short-term water needs, but are in danger
of inhibiting the extension of ultimately more efficient and
less costly piped water supplies.

The majority of home-builders in informal developments

photo: M Kjellen
use make-shift water and sanitation facilities that can be

7
improved incrementally, as the household income and/or
size expands or rental prospects increase. Formalisation
of land rights is often a last stage that may take years
to gain approval or await government support such as
regularisation projects (Kombe 2005; Kyessi 2005). While
this system is well suited to aspiring homeowners, and
eventually increases the supply of affordable rental housing,
it is largely unresponsive to issues of groundwater depletion
and pollution, or the existing plans and future possibilities
for piped water delivery.
The expanding ‘informal’ water supply systems are only
indirectly connected to the ‘formal’ water system. The
official piped water system has historically relied on surface
water, and only a few boreholes are connected to the public
water network (most of them from the so-called ‘emergency
boreholes’ drilled during 1997, see e.g. Chaggu and Edmund
2002; Gomme 2016). Because of the informal nature of
borehole and groundwater extraction, the situation remains
poorly understood and little publicised. Estimates on the
number of registered, existing and functioning boreholes
vary greatly, as do their effects on the groundwater balances
and the risk for or presence of salt water intrusion.
Extending ‘post-development’ pipes to households in the
dense informal settlements, and protecting them from
damage, is difficult and costly. Moreover, there may be
people in these communities making a living, sometimes
only a meagre one, from the informal sale of expensive
water (Kjellén and McGranahan 2006). Many community-
operated schemes have received important investment
in terms of human resources, organisation and materials,
from the community itself along with external NGOs and
often the water utility itself. In this complex web of physical
and social entanglements, the same innovations that
improved water provision in the past can inhibit further
improvements in the future. As informal settlements closer
to the centre consolidate, the web of informal housing and
water provision systems become locked in.
Regarding the challenges and contradictions that appear
in relation to the mix of distribution channels, people with
informal ways of accessing (often supply constrained)
services can end up paying far more than they would if they
had a formal household water connection (Bayliss and Tukai
2011; Kjellén and McGranahan 1997, 2006; UNDP 2006). The
root of the water price contradictions lies in the fact that
the high-income population is receiving a better service
than the majority, without being charged a higher price
for it. Yet, network expansion into informal or peripheral
areas is very costly and would require closer coordination
with the existing ways of informal supplies to those areas.
A sizeable share of the informal distribution in Dar es
Salaam operates with buckets and jerricans carried by
pushcart vendors. In areas with larger houses fitted with
larger storage facilities, tanker trucks cater for most of the
out-of-pipe distribution. In the latest census this amounted
to over 8 per cent (see Table 1). Water vending is a typically
informal business, as they are unlicensed suppliers not
under the purview of the regulator.
8
There are important social and economic advantages to
extending water services to the plot or house of every
citizen. Counting all costs, the individual piped supply is
less expensive per capita – if resources are pooled and
sequenced in a way to develop the system to serve all
citizens (Kjellén 2009). Moreover, convenient water services
pose the greatest potential to improve human health
(Howard and Bartram 2003).
The integrity of the system also depends on how water
connections are managed. Charging for connections
is a way for utilities, or their staff, to generate revenue.
Disconnection may result from the non-payment of water
bills; leading to an additional fee for reconnection. For low-
income residents, however, connection costs can provide
a greater disincentive than higher water prices and create
antagonism between those within and those outside the
system. While addressing a short-term problem, these high
costs can make it more difficult for the utility to deliver and
charge for high quality water services to the people of Dar
es Salaam.
Recommendations
Achieving universal water provision in cities has the
potential to serve the social, economic and environmental
dimensions of sustainable development. In cities where a
large share of the population does not have direct access to
piped water, many of the obstacles typically revolve around
how land is being developed, how the piped water system is
being extended, and a lack of coordination between the two.
The lack of coordination is often complicated by informal
land development and informal water provisioning. For
both land and water, the informal systems often play an
important role in meeting short-term economic and social
needs. Hence, simply suppressing the informal systems can
be disastrous. But the sharp division between the formal
and the informal is not conducive to long term sustainable
development.
First, water and land development are closely linked, and
positive relations between formal and informal systems
and practices need to be enhanced in and across both
areas. More integrated urban water management (see
e.g. Global Water Partnership 2013) suggests bringing
multiple perspectives (environmental, social, economic,
technical and political) and stakeholders together on the
relationships with land use and various types of water
resources (e.g. freshwater, wastewater, storm-water,
surface- and groundwater).
Putting the households – people’s homes – at the centre of
attention when it comes to water services planning could
make an important difference. This would be consistent
with the human rights-based approach, and supports the
broader perspectives taken into more coherent planning
processes.
Although the informal has emerged out of the shortcomings
of the formal water supply system, the two systems are
functionally related. Some vendors buy water from the
networked formal systems. At the same time the formal
system recognises the existence of informal water suppliers,
and some of them have been registered. A key policy
issue is to improve the quality of informal water services
by introducing checks and balances without undermining
its important functions. There also needs to be ways of
enhancing further improvement, including the introduction
of piped services and/or water quality checks into informal
or peripheral areas as they consolidate.

At present, there are few regulations or standards to

check and guide consolidation or the development of
land in informal settlements. This gives rise to enormous
challenges for water and sanitation provision once a
settlement consolidates (e.g. by excessive densities). The
introduction of simple spatial measures and by-laws that
can guide the structure of a settlement as it consolidates
should be explored.

Arising from the above is the need to strengthen the

capacity of the social and community level leaders and
institutions, which represent the municipality at this level
and are inter alia responsible for maintaining peace and
order. Empowerment and capacity building among these
grassroots institutions is central to improving the quality
of water services.

Conclusion

There is no silver bullet to resolving water issues in low-

income rapidly growing urban peripheries or extending
services when resources are scarce. As the formal and
informal parts, or continuum, of Dar es Salaam’s water
system are highly inter-related in terms of how water is
distributed, and how people interact with the system,
they must be addressed together. With most attention,
regulation and investment presently being directed towards
what can be characterised as the ‘formal’ system, the
informal system with self-supply and vendors, needs to be
taken much more seriously. Moreover, informality needs to
be treated not as an obstacle but as part of a system that
needs to be improved.

Acknowledgements

This brief has drawn on a project funded by DFID EARH

titled “The Urban Land Nexus and Inclusive Urbanisation in
Dar es Salaam, Khartoum and Mwanza”, led by the Institute
of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
photo: M Kjellen

9
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the Urban Poor. London: IIED. March 2006. http://pubs.iied.org/
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Citywide Inclusive Sanitation: Achieving the urban water SDGs
Christoph Lüthi
Abishek Sankara Narayan
Eawag - Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology
Between 2015 and 2030, Africa’s population is expected to
grow by 42 per cent or nearly half a billion people; Likewise,
Asia’s population will grow by a similar number, although
representing only 12 per cent growth in the continent’s
population (UN DESA 2018). Most of this growth is projected
to take place in urban areas, while rural population numbers
will stagnate. Most cities lack the basic infrastructure and
services needed for economic productivity, social inclusion
and environmental sustainability, while inequalities
within cities are persistent and widespread. The urban
poor particularly lack access to adequate shelter, water,
sanitation and health services.
Local authorities in developing cities often lack capacity
in planning and implementation and therefore are ill-
equipped to deal with this projected growth. In most
countries of the Global South, urban infrastructure
planning and programming is still top-down and follows
an expensive, technocratic and “one-size-fits-all” networked
system. Governments and agencies in low and middle-
income countries plan and develop water and sanitation
services with limited participation of the urban poor, if at
all. Even where governments follow a pro-poor approach
such as in Ethiopia, their policies and investments have
been hampered by an inadequate under¬standing of the
needs, perceptions and coping strategies of the urban poor
(ISF-UTS and SNV 2016).
The New Urban Agenda and SDGs
The United Nation’s New Urban Agenda ensured member
nations’ commitment in making cities more sustainable
photo: EAWAG _ NBO_kibera
with special attention to water and sanitation services
(UN 2017). The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
are 17 different goals, among which water, sanitation and
hygiene form Goal-6. Under this framework, there are
separate targets for drinking water, water quality, water-
related ecosystems and specifically, the universal, equitable
access to ‘improved’ sanitation. Globally, an additional one
million persons have to get access to improved sanitation
facilities each day to reach this goal by 2030 (Mara and
Evans 2017). Although compared to rural areas, cities have
better sanitation service provision, (WHO 2017), the latter is
still a major contributor of untreated wastewater, creating
hotspots for environmental degradation and public health
hazards impairing social and economic productivity.
Most importantly, within the sanitation targets of SDG 6.2,
for the first time, the focus is not only on toilet access, but on
managing the entire sanitation value chain, encompassing
containment, emptying, transport, treatment and safe
reuse or disposal. This paved the way for a paradigm shift,
where thinking goes beyond piped sewers (Ross et al.
2016). Developing cities are growing bigger and denser,
with informal and peri-urban settlements often being
underserved. To provide a citywide solution, an inclusive
approach that embraces various scales of decentralised
solutions such as faecal sludge management, container-
based sanitation and other small-scale decentralised
treatment systems, is required. Total sanitation coverage for
rapidly expanding cities of the Global South will therefore
need to comprise a mix of different contextualised solutions
(Figure 1), including sewered areas (e.g. central business
districts), decentralised or small-scale systems (e.g. specific
11
residential developments or institutions) and faecal sludge
management ecosystems (e.g. dense informal or peri-urban
settlements).
Fig. 1: Blended sanitation systems in urban settings (blue: sewered, green: decentralised
systems, brown: on-site sanitation. © Eawag-Sandec 2018
Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS)
Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (BMGF et al. 2017) is a novel
concept that is gaining traction with several sector players
including the World Bank and the Gates Foundation. CWIS
thinking rests on four main actionable pillars:
(i) Prioritise the human right of citizens to sanitation –
equitable and accessible for all;
(ii) Deliver safe management along the whole sanitation
service chain, from the toilet to safe treatment and
reuse;
(iii) Integrate sanitation in urban planning and renewal,
providing liveable and sanitary environments; and
(iv) Commit to working in partnership to deliver citywide
inclusive sanitation, including formal and informal
partners.
Clearly, citywide inclusive sanitation is cross-sectoral in
nature and can contribute to the progress of other SDGs
such as good health and wellbeing (SDG 3), gender equality
(SDG 5), reduced inequalities (SDG 10) and sustainable cities
(SDG 11). Through resource recovery and encouraging a
circular waste economy, it adds to Goals 7 and 12, clean
energy and responsible consumption (SuSanA 2017). As a
corollary, the consequences of inadequate sanitation affect
everyone, as human waste and its pathogens recognise no
boundaries and spread freely across urban areas, therefore
affecting many development goals.
There is no silver bullet for achieving total sanitation
coverage, and therefore planning and programming for
citywide inclusive sanitation with a coherent strategy
requires rigorous planning. An integrated analysis of
socio-economic, cultural, institutional and environmental
conditions is critical. A planning process should ensure
inclusion of the underrepresented communities and ensure
12
stakeholder involvement at all levels. By incorporating local
knowledge in this way, success rates of interventions could
be increased (McGranahan and Mitlin 2016). Further, this
presents an opportunity for understanding the potential of
resource recovery and its sustained use at the community
level. However, a detailed planning effort requires dedicated
financial and time resources allotted to it to deliver the
intended outcomes.
Policy Recommendations
CWIS requires a clear policy framework to enable more
inclusive and incremental sanitation solutions. In this policy
brief, we present five suggestions that might enable urban
sanitation planning and programming to move beyond the
mainstream conventional solutions.
1. A more integrated and inclusive approach is needed to
cover all urban areas. We argue for a blended approach
that includes a menu of solutions such as faecal
sludge management (FSM), decentralised or small-
scale systems for areas too far from existing sewers
and for the more affluent urban neighbourhoods,
piped sewers (Reymond; Renggli and Luthi 2016). For
blended solutions to be accepted, a concerted effort
by academia, media and decision-makers to overcome
the misconception that waterborne sewerage is the
only acceptable sanitation technology, and that
aforementioned alternative sanitation systems are
temporary and stopgap solutions. An integrated
approach also includes taking into account water
supply, solid waste management and stormwater
drainage, of the targeted location.
2. A more pragmatic approach to urban sanitation
would entail the avoidance of infrastructure plans
that are often prepared with aspirational objectives,
without a realistic consideration of what is actually
achievable given the availability of existing resources
and ignoring existing investments. The availability of
financial resources for system upgrade is a common
limiting factor and therefore, a more pragmatic
approach is to plan for improvements in incremental
steps, rather than in an ‘all or nothing’ fashion. It also
would progress towards ‘some for all’ as against ‘all
for some’ principle.
3. Planning for CWIS needs to be holistic and requires
dedicated time, effort and financial resources. The
planning process should revolve around informed
decision making, must be inclusive of all the relevant
stakeholders, and not just the municipality or urban
water and sanitation utility. The process should
ensure robust data collection of current practices,
socio-cultural, economic and environmental aspects.
This could be done through coproduction of local
knowledge, where the members of local communities
themselves, are involved in data gathering. Provision
of funds to support the above and other consultation
activities, including the development of dissemination
and communications channels, help in reaching
 different stakeholder groups, since in these settings,
stakeholder groups are not organised, and do
not always have common engagement platforms
for information exchange. Such an integrated
participatory approach improves transparency of
decision-making and promotes ownership among
the community.
4. One of the inherent challenges with sanitation
planning and programming is that they require
a range of institutions and organisations to work
together. Therefore, the level of commitment, capacity
and the relationships between these institutions
have a significant bearing on the planning process.
Coordination between different stakeholder
institutions, each of whom has a related mandate and
jurisdiction, is crucial. City leaders need to leverage
their power to drive a coherent citywide strategy and
bring all major actors to the table, and on the same
page set the functions and specific objectives of the
improved services. Civic society, user communities,
NGOs and other relevant actors, must be adequately
represented, informed and consulted throughout
the process. CWIS is less about technology fixes, and
more about process-oriented solutions (Parkinson;
Luthi and Walther 2014).
5. Although environmental considerations are implicit
in sanitation planning, the subsequent part of the
sanitation value chain, treatment and disposal/reuse,
are often inadequate. That is evident, in low and
middle-income countries, where access to ‘improved
sanitation’ as evaluated until the containment and
safe emptying is not tantamount to the wastewater
/ faecal sludge treated, with only 18 per cent of the
domestic wastewater from on-site sanitation facilities
actually being treated worldwide (UN-Water 2018). It
is therefore important to build necessary treatment
capacity for safeguarding the environment. Several
low-cost alternative technologies are on the rise
for municipal wastewater, such as the emerging
advancements in nature-based solutions, all of which
must be actively considered in the planning process.
Conclusion
With rapid urbanisation in low and middle-income countries,
the challenge of urban sanitation must be innovatively
addressed adopting a more inclusive, decentralised
and incremental approach. Successful CWIS requires
consolidated efforts in coordinated, participatory planning
involving various stakeholders, and active consideration of
management throughout the sanitation value chain.
References
BMGF, Emory University, Plan International, University of Leeds, WaterAid
and World Bank2017. ‘Citywide inclusive sanitation: a call to action’.
Available at: http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/589771503512867370/
Citywide-Inclusive-Sanitation.pdf (accessed 12 December 2018).
ISF-UTS and SNV 2016. ‘Are we doing the right thing? Critical questioning
for city sanitation planning’, p. 33.
Lüthi, C., Panesar, A., Schütze, T., Norström, A., Mcconville, J., Parkinson, J.,
Saywell, D. and Ingle, R. 2011. Sustainable sanitation in cities - A framework
for action. The Netherlands: Papiroz Publishing House.
Mara, D. and Evans, B. 2017. ‘The sanitation and hygiene targets of the
sustainable development goals: scope and challenges’, Journal of Water
Sanitation and Hygiene for Development, 8 (1), pp. 1-16.
McGranahan, G. and Mitlin, D. 2016. ‘Learning from Sustained Success:
How Community-Driven Initiatives to Improve Urban Sanitation Can Meet
the Challenges’, World Development. 87(ii), pp. 307–317.
Parkinson, J., Luthi, C. and Walther, D. 2014. Sanitation21 - A Planning
Framework for improving City-wide Sanitation Services, International
Water Associaltion. Available at: http://www.iwa-network.org/
filemanager-uploads/IWA-Sanitation-21_22_09_14-LR.pdf (accessed 12
December 2018).
Reymond, P., Renggli, S. and Luthi, C. 2016. ‘Towards Sustainable
Sanitation in an Urbanising World’, Sustainable Urbanisation, pp. 115–134.
Ross, I., Scott, R., Blackett, I. and Hawkins, P. 2016. ‘Fecal Sludge
Management: Diagnostics for Service Delivery in Urban Areas Summary
Report – Diagnostic Tools for Fecal Sludge Management Services in Urban
Areas’, Water and sanitation program technical paper; Water and sanitation
program (WSP). Washington, D.C. World Bank Group.
SuSanA 2017. ‘Contribution of Sustainable Sanitation to Agenda 2030’,
pp. 1–19, SuSanA Vision Document.
UN-Water 2018. Synthesis Report on Water and Sanitation 2018.
Available at: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content /
documents/19901SDG6_SR2018_web_3.pdf (accessed 12 December
2018).
UN 2017. New Urban Agenda, Conference on Housing and Sustainable
Urban Development (Habitat III). Available at: http://habitat3.org/
wp-content/uploads/NUA-English-With-Index-1.pdf (accessed 12
December 2018).
UN DESA 2018. ‘World Urbanization Prospects: The 2018 Revision’.
Available at: https://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Publications/Files/WUP2018-
KeyFacts.pdf (accessed 12 December 2018).
World Health Organization (WHO) 2017. Progress on Drinking
Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: 2017 update and SDG baselines.
Geneva: World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations
Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 2017. Available at http://apps.who.
int / iris / bit s tream / handle /10 665/ 258617/9789241512893 - eng.
pdf;jsessionid=83F0FBC80A367F6E81673FC402673FFD?sequence=1
(accessed 12 December 2018).
13

The Challenges Of Guanabara Bay In Rio De Janeiro: A Showcase Of The Need For Integrated And Inclusive
Source-To-Sea Urban Policies
Aikaterini Tsakanika
PhD Student in Public Policies, Strategies and Development Programme (PPED), Institute of Economy, UFRJ
Bays are often the tidal mouths of rivers, considered as
the intermediaries between coastal ocean and inland
waterways. Isolated from the main body of ocean water,
bays provide an important and nutritional ecosystem for
marine life, thus containing high biological productivity and
sustaining fisheries. Such marine and coastal resources
are vital in economic terms; as an example, the tax on the
economic activities that use directly or indirectly the Baía de
Guanabara, is estimated to generate BRL81 million (Young
and Medeiros 2017). Yet, unlike open coastlines, bays are
more susceptible to retaining contaminants due to the
restricted flushing of pollutants, low current velocities, and
high rates of sedimentation (World Bank 1988).
In the metropolitan area of Rio de Janeiro (RJ), the intense
and, typically, unregulated growth, due to settlements and
big infrastructures, suffocated and dramatically changed
the natural streams and depositories of inland water, and
even intruded the natural shorelines of Guanabara Bay
(GB), the cultural and ecological value of which are an
important reason for the inclusion of Rio de Janeiro in the
list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Besides, the intense
port activity and the heavy industry in RJ have developed
with rather lenient environmental regulations, standards
or legal restrictions having a significant impact on the local
flora and fauna and local marine ecosystems, as well as on
the local stakeholders that depend on these ecosystems
for subsistence or recreation.
Water related policies and programmes in Rio de Janeiro
Lack of sufficient funding and/or operational inertia
14
photo: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/568155
have paused large-scale infrastructure plans for waste
and sewage management in the city of RJ. The state of
Rio de Janeiro has launched a series of programmes for
treating the GB, such as the Programa de Despoluição da
Baía de Guanabara (PDBG), since 1990, which failed to be
implemented properly despite international financing and
the attraction of investments. The elaboration of state
sanitation plans based on the National Policy on Solid Waste
in 2010 has focused on unrealistic objectives rather than
incorporating a more holistic vision that included both the
sub-products of sanitation into the production circle for
the generation of alternative income and the intangible
values of environmental protection (Lourenço 2017).
The municipal plan published in 2015 for the integrated
management of the residuals in the city of RJ stipulated
environmental monitoring, amplification of the waste
collection system and emphasis on the organic treatment
of urban solid waste. Yet, the NGO Article19 (Article 19 2016)
reported limited social representation and involvement
of the municipalities, as well as limited transparency and
access to information for the progress of the Program for
Environmental Sanitation (PSAM) for the cities surrounding
the GB. Moreover, established power systems and
inequality have further marginalised citizens’ voices within
the overall objective of cleaning the GB (Costa 2015). As a
result, citizen engagement and activism are manifested
through the creation of informal agencies and forums such
as the Instituto Baía de Guanabara and Baía Viva.
The analysis of the National Water Agency (ANA) on the
hydrographic region of the Southeast Atlantic, in which
RJ state is placed, indicated that domestic waste and
pollution were among the primordial causes of surface
water degradation in urban areas (ANA 2012). The water
supply crisis in 2014 intensified the conflict among users
especially among highly urbanised areas and intense
industrial activity, such as RJ (ANA 2018). Also, lack of
consistent planning to address irregular users and to
project the urban expansion, prolonged social inequality,
particularly in peripheries. Furthermore, ANA`s institutional
mission for the period 2016-2019 is to integrate freshwater
resource management in both rural and urban settings,
typically neglecting more holistic source-to-sea approaches
(see Box 1), and thus contributing to fragmented sectoral
policy implementation primarily in coastal ecosystems. Yet,
among the proposed solutions listed were the expansion
of water supply systems or transposition of water for other
rivers, environmental restoration of natural vegetation and
the sustainable use of soil under the State Programme for
the Conservation and Revitalization of the Water Resources
(PROHIDRO), as well as operational flexibility and water
security through the integration of water supply systems
and reuse and desalination of marine water.
Box 1: Source-To-Sea approach
The source-to-sea approach acknowledges the water
system continuum that flows sediments, flora, fauna
and pollutants from the upstream-water sources to the
receiving downstream ecosystems, and in some cases vice-
versa, across territories and jurisdictions. Such perspective
underscores the interdependence of inland and marine
water systems as a premise for sustainable management.
Under the integrated and indivisible framework of 2030
Agenda, the SDT 14.1 and 14.2 are highly correlated with
the progress of the SDG 6, particularly for targets related
to wastewater, sanitation, resilience to water stress, water
use efficiency, transboundary collaboration and balanced
ecosystems.
Furthermore, Brazil’s decentralised system of governance
instigated an unequal distribution of financial sources
and disproportionate levels of administrative capacity
across the municipalities (Egler and Gusmão 2014). In
the absence of solid metropolitan institutions for the
coordinated implementation of complex and costly inter-
sectoral policies, inter-municipal initiatives thrived (ibid).
Subsequently, the metropolitan region of RJ was established
as a territorial intergovernmental and multifunctional
autarky in 2015, yet the process of consolidating its function
and organisation is still ongoing. Among its priorities for
2030 are transportation, housing and risk prevention from
flooding.
Policy Recommendations
Transparent public reporting and access to information
motivate compliance by promoting trust among users with
respect to implementation and enforcement processes
as well as reduce corruption (SDTs 16.5 and 16.6). ANA’s
national role in providing information, as the institutional
manager of national water resources, could prove to be
strategically important for establishing a holistic and
systemic vision. In this regard, ANA particularly proposes
for the watershed committees to incorporate an integrative
function that would allow the constant and harmonised
exchange of technical and institutional information. Yet,
in practice, there are some challenges in the process of
integration of coastal management planning, due to
the different territorial reference of the management
systems, and the disregard of the effects of the coastal
hydrodynamics on water resources.
The 2030 Agenda and subsequently the New Urban Agenda,
developed during the Habitat III conference of the UN,
reinforce sustainable urban and territorial planning and
development by incorporating important ecological services
and social functions of fragile ecosystems such as the bays
to absorb unnecessary pressures to oceans, seas and fresh
water bodies (UN 2017), and to decrease local vulnerabilities
(coastal erosion, desertification, ocean acidification, sea-
rise levels, and salinisation of the water bodies) in the
event of extreme natural phenomena. Dynamic ecosystem-
based solutions and the strong orientation towards climate
change mitigation and adaptation need to be a key element
of urban management planning, with a view to reduce the
costs of urban infrastructure recuperation and to anticipate
future integration with other sub-urban areas.
Furthermore, the incorporation of the “Blue Economy” (see
Box 2) principles into the urban planning of the metropolitan
area of RJ could reinforce the international precedents
aiming for more sustainable urbanisation solutions as
depicted in Habitat I, II, III and SDG11 in particular.
Box 2: Blue Economy
First elaborated at the Rio +20 United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development in 2012, aspires to appease
the need for employment generation and protection of the
marine ecosystems, in recognition of their value for the
security of local socio-economic well-being.
Accordingly, investments should be prioritised for the
optimisation of both the sea transport systems and the
heavy industrial activity, a necessary condition to redirect
the economy to ocean related knowledge (SDT 9.4), as
well as the encouragement of innovative cross-sector
initiatives that upgrade the role of the natural units of
ecosystems, the GB in this case. Also, the highly urbanised
coastal municipalities of RJ should invest in ocean-related
knowledge (SGT 14.A), and provide incentives for an
innovative and integrated wastewater management system
that uses wastewater as a cost-efficient and sustainable
resource of energy and soil nutrients (WWAP 2018), while
considering the tipping points of the bay’s resilience in
response to the aggregated pressures of the wastewater
disposal system (SDT 14.1,14.2 and 6.6).
15
In the case of RJ, the subcommittees of the Watershed
Committee of GB (CBH-BG) present a significant variety and
disparity in membership, status, know-how, administrative
capacity and financial autonomy. These constraints, in
addition to conflicting agendas, power asymmetries and
lack of proper dissemination of information, prevent
natural resource users or civil society representatives in
the metropolis from full and meaningful participation in
the decision making. Hence, the empowering of citizen
participation (SDT 11.3) is primordial and would require,
among other things, targeted communication with the
employment of artistic means to identify shared values
and priorities, or common risks among state and non-state
actors. Most importantly, as the targets on transparent
institutions (SDTs 16.6 and 16.7) uphold, consolidated
institutional means to reinforce the transparent, qualified
and equal participation in the processes that define and
set those priorities and values, may allow better and more
suitable public policy adaptation to the local and regional
realities, and, ultimately, may lead to more accountability
from all counterparts involved.
Moreover, decentralised international cooperation
for integrated and participative governance could
strengthen the local authorities and provide resources
for bottom-up informed solutions. According to SDT
17.16 on the international cooperation for knowledge
sharing, global connectivity as well as coordinated and
integrated management and knowledge sharing can act
as incentives for better management. For instance, the
initiative of the University of Maryland to replicate the
scientific methodology applied to the management of
the Cheasapeake Bay, provided with recommendations
and participative workshops, identify the elements of a
successful bay restoration for RJ (Maryland University 2013).
In this regard, a network of coastal cities throughout Latin
America and the Caribbean and across the globe could
facilitate the sharing of ideas, resources, and perspectives
relating to urban planning as well as water and marine
resource governance.
Concluding Remarks
The concerns over the inland water resources governance and
management of natural coastal landscapes have emerged
due to exponential economic and human development
processes as reflected in highly urbanised agglomerations.
Over time, targeted policies and programmes strived to
surmount the serious repercussions of urban development
on natural coastal landscapes and ecosystems of the iconic
Guanabara Bay to no avail. If integrated water management
policies are seriously developed −taking into account
balanced concerns related to economic production and
social inclusion, as well as coastal and marine conservation
based on the 2030 Agenda −, its recuperation may become
an important showcase for coastal urban development.
16
References
ANA (Agência Nacional de Âguas) 2012. Panorama da qualidade
das águas superficiais do Brasil: 2012, ANA Website, http://
arqui vos.ana.gov.br/ ins titucional/sge /CEDOC /Cat alogo/ 2012 /
PanoramaAguasSuperficiaisPortugues.pdf (accessed 12 December 2018).
ANA (Agência Nacional de Âguas) 2018. Brazilian Water Resources Report
– 2017: Full Report,
Website of the Sistema Nacional de Informações sobre Recursos Hídricos
http://www.snirh.gov.br/portal/snirh/centrais-de-conteudos/conjuntura-
dos-recursos-hidricos/conj2017_rel_ingles-1.pdf (accessed 12 December
2018).
Article19 2016. ‘Novo relatório analisa a transparência nos programas de
despoluição da Baía de Guanabara’, http://artigo19.org/blog/2016/07/29/
novo-relatorio-analisa-a-transparencia-nos-programas-de-despoluicao-
da-baia-de-guanabara/ (accessed 12 December 2018).
Costa, M. A. M., 2015. From mud to chaos: an estuary called Guanabara
Bay. Cadernos Metrópole, 17(33), 15-39.
Egler, C. A., and Gusmão, P. P. 2014. Gestão costeira e adaptação às
mudanças climáticas: o caso da Região Metropolitana do Rio de Janeiro,
Brasil. Revista de Gestão Costeira Integrada, 14(1), 65-80.
Lourenço, 2017. Rio de Janeiro aquém de 2016: A oportunidade adiada
para despoluição do complexo de rios, de lagoas, e da Baia de Guanabara.
Texto para discussão. Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - Brasília
Maryland University 2013. Guanabara Bay Project. Maryland University
website: https://www.umces.edu/guanabara-bay-0 (accessed 14
December 2018).
UN (United Nations) 2017. ‘New Urban Agenda’. Habitat III website,
http://habitat3.org/wp-content/uploads/NUA-English.pdf (accessed 12
December 2018).
Young C.E.F. and Medeiros, R. 2017. ‘Baía de Guanabara: um olhar
econômico’ in Baía de Guanabara. http://www.academia.edu/36838837/
Ba%C3%ADa_de_Guanabara_um_olhar_econ%C3%B4mico (accessed 12
December 2018).
WWAP (United Nations World Water Assessment Programme)/UN-Water
2018. The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018: Nature-
Based Solutions for Water. Paris, UNESCO http://unesdoc.unesco.org/
images/0026/002614/261424e.pdf (accessed 12 December 2018).

Urban Water Challenges of India: The Case of Delhi
Nitya Nanda
The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI)
Delhi is the largest urban agglomeration in India, and it
also faces one of the most complex set of urban water
challenges in the country. With an estimated population of
28.5 million, it is the second largest urban agglomeration in
the world only after Tokyo, which has a population of about
37.5 million. Delhi became the capital city only in 1911, but
it has been the capital of various kingdoms and empires
for several centuries, chosen mostly due to its proximity to
Yamuna, a perennial river. In Delhi, the Aravalli mountain
range meets the Gangetic plain and the river Yamuna. The
city is located on the Aravalli range side of the Yamuna with
rocky soil that ensures that it is not affected by bank erosion
or flooding (as compared to the eastern side of the river).
The river Yamuna has been worshipped by the Hindus as
goddess Yamuna, the daughter of the Sun God Surya, and
the sister of Yama, the God of Death. It was believed that
by taking a bath in the river one could avoid death as Yama
could not harm a person who has already been blessed
by his sister. Essentially it meant that the quality of the
water in Yamuna was so high that one could avoid illnesses.
Today the Yamuna, particularly after it enters Delhi, is the
most polluted river in the country. The river’s fall from
grace also epitomises the water challenges of Delhi and
its surrounding region. Delhi shows how the inability to
manage water ecology and sanitation can lead to difficulties
in ensuring access to good quality water.
In the context of urban water challenges, providing drinking
water and sanitation facilities to all at affordable costs,
maintaining water ecology including the protection of
rivers, lakes and aquifers from pollution, and protecting
people from possible flooding are the major issues.
photo: Shutterstock
Making clean water accessible to every household in
sufficient quantity and at affordable cost is a major challenge
in almost all cities in the developing world. But Delhi faces
shortages in terms of the overall availability of clean water
despite the River Yamuna flowing through the heart of the
city. This is because the river is not only dry for half of the
year but also it is so polluted that often it has been called
a “sewage drain”. There are several barrages on Yamuna
which do not allow even a minimum flow down the main
river. The most damaging is the barrage at Hathnikund
about 200 km upstream of Delhi which diverts the entire
water to Eastern Yamuna Canal (EYC) and Western Yamuna
Canal (WYC) leaving the main course totally dry during
the dry season. As a result, the otherwise perennial river
Yamuna is not even able to supply the drinking water
requirements of Delhi (Nanda et al 2015).
The installation of major irrigation systems in the Yamuna
basin started in the fourteenth century when, what is now
known as Western Yamuna Canal, was constructed. But it
had fallen under disuse. The British East India Company,
almost immediately after the establishment of their
suzerainty in this part of the country, decided to reconstruct
the WYC in 1818, which was completed in 1823. Immediately
after this, they initiated the EYC project which opened in
1830. Both canals begin at about the same height of the
river Yamuna and were followed by the construction of
several other canals (Chaturvedi 2012).
Thus, river Yamuna has an early history of the major
diversion of river water for agricultural use. What makes this
problematic today, is its extension, impeding a minimum
ecological or environmental flow in the river. The need for
17
a minimum flow was highlighted in a 1999 judgment of the
Supreme Court of India, which enacted that the government
should to ensure a minimum flow of 10 m3/s in the Yamuna
River as it flows through Delhi. However, the decision was
taken in the context of improving the water quality of the
river rather than maintaining the river ecology. Even though
the current policy considers maintaining water ecology to
be an important issue, the principle has not been translated
into practice and there has not been a lot of research into
what the minimum ecological or environmental flow in a
river at a particular point should be.
Diversion of water is not the only reason for the drying
of the river. During the rainy season when the river is full,
the neighbouring aquifer gets recharged, and when the
dry season starts the same water gets discharged into the
river. However, for this to happen, the river bed has to be
substantially lower than the ground level. Himalayan rivers
are known to carry substantial amounts of sediment and
due to the construction of several barrages (there are three
barrages on Yamuna within the geographical limit of Delhi),
the river bed level has raised as a result of the deposition
of silt, thereby reducing the dry flow of the river during
the dry season. This has been further aggravated by the
excessive withdrawal of groundwater for agricultural and
other purposes. Mindless encroachment and construction
in the river floodplains further aggravated this problem.
This raised riverbed level has increased the incidents of
floods that affect the poor and vulnerable.
Without the river water, Delhi and its surrounding urban
regions are depending more and more on groundwater for
their drinking water and other needs leading to a reduction
in the ground water level. As a result, about 700 lakes and
water bodies have now dried up. In Delhi, there are several
step-wells, locally known as baoli. The one in central Delhi
had water even a decade ago but it has now dried up
allegedly due to the construction of the Delhi metro. The
construction of high-rise buildings is also responsible for
the drying up of groundwater. Delhi is now located within
a region that is among the top global hotspots where
groundwater is depleting fast.
The drying up of water bodies have meant that for many
poor people the source of their water supply has vanished.
Water bodies are also linked to the livelihoods of many
people working in fisheries and water tourism. These
livelihoods have also been lost. While many farmers are
still growing vegetables in the Yamuna floodplains, these
vegetables are not fit for human consumption due to toxic
waste discharged by the city that is unable to be washed
away due to the lack of available water, thereby making the
whole ecosystem highly toxic. These vegetables and fish
from the river are consumed by people in areas close by
to it, which is a serious hazard to their health.
In India the established norm is to supply 135 litres per
capita per day in big cities. While most cities do not supply
as per the norm, the city of Delhi supplies much more. But
the average can be misleading. Nearly 40 per cent of urban
households in India have no access to public supply and
18
have to depend on other sources of water (IIHS 2014). In
the case of Delhi, in 2011, about 19 per cent of households
did not have a piped water supply (Joshi 2011). There is
substantial inequity even among the households with a
piped supply. Poor people with no piped supply, source
water from informal suppliers and pay much higher prices
not only in terms of nominal costs but also in terms of the
time used to collect their water. Considering their prevailing
role as household managers, involving washing, cooking
and procuring food and water, women are the worst
sufferers of this situation.
Water has often been the cause of violent conflicts
among neighbouring families occasionally causing death
(Safe Water Network 2016 and Several News Reports).
Since informal suppliers source their water illegally from
bore wells taking it from the public supply, government
crackdowns on this can make the poor people worse off.
Poor Access to Drinking Water
The conflict is not limited to urban undersupplied localities.
Delhi now sources water not only from Yamuna, but also
rivers like Ganga and Sutlej which are far away and do not
flow through Delhi. Even the major part of Yamuna water
is not sourced directly from the river, but from the Western
Yamuna Canal which flows through the state of Haryana.
Delhi has seen bitter fights with Haryana including in courts
about the sharing of the water. Delhi now also depends on
several other states like Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab
and Himachal Pradesh for its water supply.
Water Sources of Delhi
source: Delhi Jal Board
Urban water challenges in Delhi cannot be seen in isolation
as they are closely linked to water challenges in surrounding
rural areas, particularly for agricultural use. Delhi has to go
a long way in terms of harvesting rainwater and recycling
waste water. While the recent policy for the free supply of up
to 20,000 litres per household per month and progressive
pricing beyond that has reduced wastage, not much has
been done to bring equity in supply by ensuring access for
the poor and vulnerable.
The implications that inadequate water management
has on education, women, poverty, health, sustainable
agriculture, peace, justice and responsible production and
consumption – exemplified here in the case of Delhi – shows
that achieving the Sustainable Development Goal to ensure
availability and sustainable management of clean water
and sanitation for all, requires an integrated approach to
the problem as well as to the solution and public policies
and programmes need to be implemented in a coordinated
manner.
References
Chaturvedi, Mahesh C. 2012. India’s Waters: Environment, Economy and
Development, Boca Raton, CRC Press.
IIHS 2014. Urban Water Supply and Sanitation in India, Bangalore, Indian
Institute of Human Settlement.
Joshi, Varsha. 2012. Houses, Household Amenities and Assets: Drinking
Water, Census of India 2011, NCT Delhi, New Delhi, Directorate of Census
Operations, Delhi, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
Nanda, Nitya, Abu Saleh Khan and Krishna Dwivedi. 2015. Hydro-politics
in GBM Basin: The Case of Bangladesh-India Water Relations, New Delhi,
TERI Press.
Safe Water Network. 2016. Drinking Water Supply for Urban Poor: City of
New Delhi. New Delhi, Safe Water Network.
19

How Does Water Affect Cities and People? The Case of the Greater Paris Sanitation Utility (SIAAP)
Jacques Olivier
General Manager of SIAAP
Since the 1960s, large scale investment in wastewater
treatment capacity led to a significant improvement in
water quality. This was achieved by the interconnection of
six plants and real time optimisation of the Greater Paris
sanitation system. As a consequence of this improvement,
fish are back in the Seine: we count 33 species today while
there were only seven left in the early seventies.
Large cities, “Mega-cities”, like Paris, will now need to
meet new challenges such as a growing population in their
suburbs. More importantly, they need to consider their
impact on the natural environment at a greater scale, on
the atmosphere and further downstream, even on ocean
wildlife.
The focus of the Greater Paris Sanitation Utility’s (SIAAP
in French) operations and its Resource and Development
(R&D) department are being directed towards preventing
climate change, the growing concentration of persistent
pollutants in the ecosystem and the accumulation of
plastics in the ocean.
At the same time as the population is growing, and so the
anthropogenic pressure on natural resource increases, the
expectations of the population in terms of quality of life
are also developing. Breathing fresh air but also having
more possibilities for leisure and outdoor activities, such
as swimming in rivers and lakes, are becoming a normal
expectation for inhabitants of Paris or any other Mega-city.
Answers to these new challenges and expectations are
manifold and less technical in comparison to the solutions
for challenges from previous decades.
20
photo: SIAAP
SIAAP, favours a holistic approach such as the one proposed
in the UN 2030 Agenda with its 17 objectives to transition
the world towards sustainable development. SIAAP has
therefore translated the major issues of this agenda into
a long-term strategic plan called SIAAP 2030, with the
following three concepts at its core:
• Universality: the wastewater system is part of a
“water wise smart city” in a context where the water
cycle of the city occupies a growing place in urban
development to cope with the needs of its citizens
providing them a better quality of life;
• Communication: in its external communication, SIAAP
aims to make every person recognise their role in
shared environmental responsibility;
• Cooperation: promoting powerful and effective
synergies among urban water management services,
rivers, sanitation, recreation and urban planning.
The Paris Example: Listening to popular demand to
improve inhabitant’s appropriation of natural resources
One of the emblematic projects, aiming to achieve the vision
of a water-wise city with a strong focus on its inhabitants,
is to make the Seine swimmable, to meet the demand from
the population for a new use of the river: water recreation.
France, the city of Paris and the Seine-Saint-Denis
department will host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in
2024. Two swimming events will be organized in the Seine,
at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the triathlon event and the
open water swim.
The nomination file indicated that the stakeholders want
to leave a legacy of the Olympic Games, in the form of an
improved river water quality to a level that allows swimming
access for the local residents from the region.
SIAAP aims to support the Paris region sustainable
development effort by improving the bathing conditions of
the Seine and contributing to the energy transition towards
a carbon neutral city.
Headed by a board composed of 33 local elected
representatives from four departments, SIAAP is a member
of the “basin committee”. The basin committee is a kind of
water parliament, linking Paris to its upstream catchment,
where water management policy is discussed by water
users with elected representatives from cities, industries,
farming, environmental and consumer associations, state
authorities and so on.
Thanks to the work of the basin committee, a great
improvement in the Seine water quality has been achieved
over the last twenty years as a result of the renovation of
networks, modernisation of wastewater treatment plants
by the addition of nitrogen and phosphorus treatment
modules, creation of storage tanks and use of artificial
intelligence to manage wastewater flows.
These achievements contribute to the confidence that future
projects, planned within the basin committee framework,
will enable swimming in the Seine. This will send a positive
signal to people with regards to water quality improvement.
New environmental expectations are likely to encourage
greater citizen involvement in city water management and
resource management.
Green infrastructures improve the city landscapes whilst
enabling better stormwater management. More green and
blue infrastructures in the city will ultimately preserve
biodiversity and mitigate the effects of heat in densely
urbanised environments. The importance of sanitation
in Mega cities goes therefore beyond its first purpose of
cleaning wastewater and becomes a key component in
improving the citizens’ quality of life and public health.
A feeling of environmental insecurity manifests itself in
fears about the contamination of the environment by
various pollutants. Drug residues, endocrine disruptors
and the ever-re-examined confidence in the quality of tap
water contribute to this, creating a feeling of distrust in
experts and institutions.
Taking societal expectations into account is therefore at
the heart of the “SIAAP 2030” strategic project, whilst
taking also into account the affordability of the service
and responsible cost management.
Trust-generating communication is essential as we need
to accelerate ownership of the SDGs by all stakeholders,
from the people to institutions. A race against the clock
to save the planet commits everyone to find ways to limit
the negative effects of human activities on our resources,
biodiversity and the climate. It is therefore necessary to
adopt a universal, evidence-based communication strategy
that reaches out to all audiences and stakeholders. We must
also be uncompromising in fostering this kind of common
effort.
The need for partnership work and a master plan
Regarding swimming in the Seine, the challenge remains
to achieve sufficient bacteriological quality. The European
Water Framework Directive defines good environmental
status based on physicochemical parameters but does not
refer to bacteriological conditions. In other words, there
should be no fences in the bathing areas. The existence of
Escherichia coli and total coliforms bacteria in water are two
indicators of contaminants that should not end up in the
natural environment. They are comparable to disinfection
targets in swimming pools. Nowadays SIAAP has a master
plan to achieve this goal.
This plan concerns all local authorities who will have to, for
instance, correct illegal connections that pollute the Seine.
It should be kept in mind that five litres of sewage, the
equivalent of a toilet flush, contaminate 50 cubic metres of
bathing water. It is also a question of organising collection
systems for the polluted water from moored and sailing
boats, none of which is done today. In sewage treatment
plants, disinfection systems must also be implemented.
They currently only treat nitrogen, carbon and phosphorus
but not bacteria. During stormy events, whether swimming
is allowed or not, extended storage capacities could
be necessary to retain water and send it for treatment
afterwards.
The objective is very ambitious and relies on the SIAAP’s
sanitation master plan platform, which brings together
the departments, the region, the municipalities, the Basin
Agency, the state authorities and so on. Such a broad
participatory approach is all the more important for
assessing the situation and jointly working together to
identify solutions resulting in a shared action plan.
In order to quantify the discharges (treatment plants,
Combined Sewer Overflows, etc.) and to prioritise them,
a “hydraulic and quality” modelling study was carried out.
This work, conducted from 2017 - 2018, made it possible
to define an action plan that includes the following
achievements:
• Compliance of all the household connections,
especially on separated sewerage networks;
• Removal of boat discharges (moored or on river);
• Reduction in the stormwater discharge volumes from
the sewage networks by disconnecting five per cent
of the upstream impervious surface;
21
 • Real time optimisation of network operation in rainy
weather;

• Discharge disinfection from Seine-Valenton and

Marne-Aval plants: trials are in progress to assess the
effectiveness of using a performic acid injection as a
disinfectant compared to using a UV solution.

SIAAP also intends to develop smart system software to

provide an early warning system of the bathing water
quality in order to help authorities to manage each bathing
area and improve the real-time management of the bathing
water system.

The tool will incorporate two main innovations: (a) an

advanced statistical machine learning model for early
and robust water quality prediction and (b) the fast
measurement of bacterial contamination coupled with
SIAAP’s real-time control system. It will also be associated
with new mobile applications to inform key decision-makers
and citizens of the bathing water contamination related
risks. This system must be developed before its operational
implementation. The SIAAP has recently partnered with
the cities of Milan, Sofia, Copenhagen, Paris and Berlin.
This has initiated advanced projects on this topic, similar
to those by many other European actors, such as cities,
research institutes and start-ups, to submit a proposal
to obtain funding for the Horizon 2020 initiative from the
European Union.

photo: SIAAP

22

Cities And Water Security: The Role Of Local Governments
Estela Maria Souza Costa Neves
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Institute of Economics
Postgraduate Programme in Public Policies, Strategies and Development / PPED. Researcher at the National Institute for
Science and Technology in PPED / INCT-PPED.
The Earth’s water resources are characterised as finite,
sensitive and irreplaceable (UNEP 2009), and are essential
for all aspects of life and development. Nowadays, access
to water is under pressure from misuse, decreasing water
availability, depletion of water resources, increasing water
demand, ecosystem degradation, and growing pollution,
evidenced by water supply crises in several regions
including the Middle East, India, Italy, the USA and Brazil.
In 2017, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio
Guterres, warned the UN Security Council about escalating
tension and disputes over access to clean water, both
among communities, population segments, and countries,
as “strains on water access are already rising in all regions”,
noting that by 2050, no less than 25 per cent of people
will live in countries without enough access to clean water
(United Nations 2017). Strategies to promote sustainable
water management should also consider the uncertainties
and additional pressures brought about by climate change.
Within this framework, water security issues stand out
as major policy challenges. What exactly, however, does
water security consist of? At which level should this issue
be addressed? In this text, it will be attempted to briefly
familiarise the reader with the topic from the perspective
of city governance, with references to cases in Brazil.
Water security: An emerging concept
Water security is an umbrella term that encompasses
a variety of water issues - in particular the governance
dilemmas pertaining to its scarcity, difficulty of access,
photo: Estela Neves
contamination, low quality, droughts and floods. Essentially,
water security concerns the need to ensure clean and amply
available water for both human beings and the ecosystem
(Strickert et al. 2016). Arisen in the academic realm during
the 1990s and incorporated into the political milieu over
the early 2000s, currently the expression is widely used
in official documents and government statements, as a
subject of academic research, a common media topic, and
it has been included in the agendas of social movements
and civil society organisations.
Most of the available definitions of water security fall under
four aspects: quantity and availability of water, risks and
vulnerability, human needs, and sustainability (Cook and
Bakker 2016). In 2013, the UN agencies that comprise
UN-Water formulated a definition that has been widely
adopted, integrating several aspects, which defines water
security as “(t)he capacity of a population to safeguard
sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable
quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being,
and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection
against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters,
and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and
political stability.” (UN-Water 2013).
The promotion of water security encompasses several
spatial dimensions, from residential units to urban
agglomerations and national territories. These address
human needs, ecosystem services, economic activities,
disaster prevention, and the protection of the natural
systems responsible for water production. Thus, water
23
security policies require both the development of a strategic
long-term vision as well as short-term and emergency
measures to address hazardous situations, collapses as
well as vulnerable areas and groups.
Except in extreme circumstances where clean water
availability is next to nil, water security deals less with
the physical availability of water and more with decisions
pertaining to the access and distribution to different users
under constrained situations marked by scarcity (see Box
1) – not only physical scarcity, but also socioeconomic
scarcity. Considering biophysical and socio-political
processes inseparable, political ecology researchers draw
our attention to the relevance of asking ‘water security for
who?’ and to the interdependencies with other security
resources such as food, energy and climate (Zeitoun 2013).
Finally, there is an unequal distribution of water scarcity
costs: water crises always present inacceptable higher
levels of risk for most of the world’s poorest people (Grey
and Connors, 2009).
Box 1: Water Scarcity
Hydrologists assess water scarcity as a population-water
equation: when annual water supplies drop below 1,000
m3 per person, the population faces water scarcity, and
below 500 cubic meters absolute scarcity (United Nations
2018). However, water scarcity may be considered from
more points of view, such as a crisis related to a lack of
services that provide safe water and as a crisis caused by
scarce water resources (UNDP 2006), as well as a process
related to governance failures.
Public policies: Water security and cities
At the global level of the United Nations, there is no separate
UN entity dedicated exclusively to water issues. Unlike
themes such as climate change and biodiversity, water
security still lacks a global framework agreement between
all member states. Nevertheless, freshwater management
and water security issues have drawn increasing attention
in view of integrated sustainable water management during
the last decade. The affirmation of access to clean drinking
water as a basic human right has been acknowledged by
the United Nations General Assembly since 2010 (UN 2010).
Finally, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,
adopted by Heads of State and Government at a special UN
summit in September 2015, was a landmark achievement
that recognises water challenges amongst many others.
They were included among the seventeen Sustainable
Development Goals, especially in SDG6, to ensure availability
and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
and to achieve, inter alia, by 2030, universal and equitable
access to safe and affordable drinking water for all (Target
6.1) and to ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of
freshwater to address water scarcity (Target 6.4).
At national level, in most countries water scarcity and
vulnerability issues have been addressed by sectoral
policies: most existing measures of water security are
24
developed at central and watershed levels, tackling only
some part of the problems to be addressed. So far only a
few countries – among which are Panama, Australia and
the Netherlands - expressly formulated national policies
on water security, adopting a comprehensive, multisectoral
and strategic approach to face water crises.
Water security challenges require a holistic, multi-
stakeholder and multilevel approach, encompassing the
whole water cycle, all users, several spatial scales (national,
regional and local scale), as well as short and long-term
temporal scales. Urban areas are growing all over the world,
increasing the demand for energy, food and good quality
water in sufficient quantity. Large cities, with concentrated
populations and economic activities, are often incapable of
meeting their water supply needs from within their urban
area itself (Hoekstra et al. 2018). Thus, cities are nowadays
more prone to water scarcity than ever, calling for specific
water security strategies to address the risk of shortage,
risk of inadequate quality for several uses, risk of excess
(overflow of the water systems) and risk of undermining the
resilience of natural water systems (Brears 2017).
How could local governments contribute to increasing urban
water security, considering that many challenges rely on
other jurisdictions and depend on financial, administrative
and technical capacities? Local governments play an
important role in water management and security, given
their jurisdiction on four key public policy areas: sanitation,
public health, environment and civil defence. Local
governments are often directly responsible for providing
sanitation services, including the population’s access to
safe drinking water and the disposal, treatment and final
destination of wastewater, the proper management of
solid waste and rainwater drainage. The environmental
health departments of local government may have some
responsibility on the quality of drinking water. These duties
have immediate impact on the availability and quality of
water resources. Local governments are also responsible
for environmental protection at local level, encompassing
pollution control and the protection of water sources,
riparian areas, aquifer recharge and sensitive areas, as
well as local risk and vulnerable areas assessment. They
also have the responsibility of enforcing regional and
national policy in these areas. Furthermore, they can also
promote non-conventional and innovative actions under
their jurisdiction on water issues, such as diversifying
urban water sources (e.g. rainwater harvesting, revival of
local water sources and wastewater recycling and reuse),
increasing efficiency of current water systems, assessing
local risk in light of local climate variability and raising
awareness among the population.
Thus, local governments are the only state entity capable of
assessing the state of the water supply system on account of
present and future needs, integrating sector policies within
their territory and interpreting local interests and demands
for ensuring access to clean drinking water and water
security in the development of local, regional and national
water policies. This array of local responsibilities highlights
local governments as key players in the construction of
drinking water security, protagonists at local level and
important actors for water security strategies developed
by other government levels.
Such is the case in Brazil: despite the topic of water security
already being on the national agenda, there is still no
strategy in place to deal with the next water crisis. Brazil
has no formal water security policy yet, nor any institutional
definition of water security. A National Water Security Plan
(PNSH, Plano Nacional de Segurança Hídrica) has been in
development since 2012 but it is yet to be disclosed for
public consultation. Regarding Brazilian local government’s
competences, they are responsible for sanitation policy,
which includes planning for services that comprise clean
water supply, sewage treatment, urban cleaning and the
management of solid waste, rainwater drainage, and the
cleaning and inspection of sanitation networks. When
planning the service, emergency actions should be defined
for contingencies involving scarcity and rationing, and the
adoption of parameters to ensure essential public health,
including defining a minimum per capita volume for
public supply. In partnership with the state’s and federal
governments, local governments are responsible for public
health services - including the duties to ensure the quality
of water for human consumption within their territory and
the control of water surveillance for human consumption.
Municipalities are jointly responsible for the protection
of the environment, and therefore for the stewardship of
watersheds and the natural areas that affect the latter in
their territory. In addition, they are jointly responsible with
the states and the federal governments for monitoring the
exploitation of water resources in their territory, and for
the civil defence policy. Because of these responsibilities,
Brazilian local governments are also co-producers of official
information on water, which should be made publicly
accessible to all.
governments should carry out their responsibilities to
promote the sustainable provision of safe drinking water.
Their autonomy is conditioned by both constitutional and
pragmatic circumstances: some water-related challenges
can indeed be addressed by local governments in a self-
sufficient manner, whereas others depend on joint action
by the local authority and other spheres of government,
particularly in larger cities and in metropolitan regions.
These interdependencies may only be addressed through
the construction of cooperative regimes for water security.
In Brazil, the federal organisation of the government implies
that local policies are often the product of a complex
interaction between municipal initiatives grounded in self-
rule and municipal actions dependent on intergovernmental
cooperative regimes, grounded in shared-rule. The
exercise of autonomous action is embedded on the
institutional federative framework, which encompasses
intergovernmental relations for cooperative actions,
regional and national coordination, adequate checks and
balances, and on the unique historical development of each
municipal jurisdiction.
The combination of these characteristics of national public
policies with the continental dimensions of the Brazilian
territory, and the sharp inter- and intra-regional disparities,
engender poignant demand for cooperation, to enable the
adaptation of national policy guidelines to local peculiarities.

Recommendations

Achieving urban water security demands the promotion

of a transition process towards more sustainable,
effective and democratic water management, grounded
on the singularities of each city. There is no “one-size-
fits-all” solution. Many cities have already started this
process towards urban water security, such as New York,
Amsterdam, Berlin, Copenhagen, Denver, Hamburg,
London, Singapore, Toronto and Vancouver, that offer best
practices and lessons learnt (Brears 2017).

Both water management and water security strategies are

continual and long-term activities that comprise several
spatial and temporal scales. Water security strategies
include the safe access to raw water and to drinking water;
for the latter, especially from the point of view of basic
human needs, local governments should play a leading role.

From the perspective of regional and central governments,

it is essential to identify the role to be played by local
governments in an effective regional and national water
security strategy. From the viewpoint of the cities, local
photo: Estela Neves

25
Conclusion
In the field of water security, this demand is particularly
acute: more than an alternative to overcome the scarcity
of public resources, cooperation proves a sine qua non to
enable actions for water security, both between adjacent
local governments and among the different spheres of
government, and for bridging local government, civil society
and local stakeholders.
From this perspective, three crucial factors emerge. The
first pertains to challenges regarding effective metropolitan
governance – already in place in many countries yet a
decades-long impasse in Brazil- which still lacks an effective
governance framework for the management of common
services.
The second challenge is technical, financial, and institutional
capacity-building processes, both in public organisations
and in civil society and private-sector organisations, for the
construction of effective and sustainable water security
strategies.
The third challenge is the construction of cooperative
regimes for water security: systems involve building
governance arrangements that support the exercise of
joint responsibility through coordination mechanisms,
vertical and horizontal cooperation systems, ruling the
exercise of common function, instruments for checks and
balances, compensation mechanisms to balance disparate
capabilities between subnational entities and, particularly,
regular and reliable sources of funding.
26
References
Argen Y. Hoeksstra et al. 2018. Urban water security: a review.
Environmental Research Letters 13, 053002 Available at: http://www.
journals4free.com/link.jsp?l=4704069 (accessed 12 December 2018).
Brears, R. Urban water security. Oxford, UK: Wiley, 2017
Cook, C. and Bakker, K. 2016. ‘Water security: critical analysis of emerging
trends and definitions.’ In: Pahl-Wostl, C.; Bhaduri, A.; Gupta, J. (eds)
Handbook on water security. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, p. 19-37
Gain, A., Giupponi, C. and Wada, Y. 2016. Measuring global water security
towards sustainable development goals. Environmental Research Letters,
2016, 124015.
Grey, D. and Connors, G. 2009. The Water security imperative: we must and
can do more. 5th World Water Forum, Istanbul
Strickert, G. et al. 2016. Unpacking viewpoints on water security: lessons
from the South Saskatchewan River Basin. Water Policy 18, p. 50-72.
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Adopted by the General Assembly on 28 July 2010.
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water-agenda/ (accessed 12 December 2018).
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– principles, perspectives and practices. New York: Routledge, p. 11-25.

Managing Excessive Water Flows In Cities: Nature-Based Solutions
Bruno Tisserand
President of the European Federation of National Associations of Water Services (EurEau)
Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges
facing society today. Not only does it impact on humanity, it
requires the significant re-adaptation of our infrastructure
too. But what if nature was the solution?
The issue
Across Europe, there are only three million kilometres
of sewers to collect waste water and drain storm water.
Some collecting systems have separate pipes for storm
water and waste water (separate systems), whereas other
collecting systems combine both storm water and waste
water in the same system of pipes (combined systems).
Historically, collecting systems were constructed as urban
areas developed, and typically, older cities tend to have
combined systems.
Combined systems incorporate overflow devices (combined
sewer overflows or CSOs) to ensure that when storm water
flows are high, the excess flow can spill into a receiving
water body at a designated location, ensuring that sensitive
environments, public places and property are protected.
Overflow events are, by their nature, intermittent local
discharges, which are weather dependent. Discharges
from CSOs may sometimes have a detrimental impact
on the status of water bodies, like lakes or rivers, thereby
temporarily affecting compliance with some EU directives
such as the Bathing Waters or Habitats Directives.
Climate change in Europe will lead to more extreme
weather conditions overall such as heavy downpours and
long dry spells becoming more frequent (EEA 2017). Our
current infrastructure might not be ready for this increased
photo: EUREAU
intensity and we urgently need to adapt what is in place for
what is to come.
Until now, European municipalities have mainly focused on
‘grey’ solutions, using impermeable concrete to build storm
water basins and large sewers. Experience shows that this
approach does not overcome the problem as the retention
capacity cannot be increased forever.
Growing urban sprawl has increased the amount of land
that has been sealed off preventing rainwater from seeping
into the earth through the use of concrete and road
surfacing and so on. This results in more water having to
be evacuated through combined sewers and exacerbates
the pressure on water networks to deal with overflows.
How can municipalities find truly sustainable solutions?
Recent initiatives in Europe, taking clues from nature, could
lead the way in finding sustainable resources.
The case for Nature Based Solutions (NBS)
The problem with combined sewers lies in the inherent
limited volume of water each system can hold before it
overflows. Since the capacities are fixed, only few resources
are available:
1. Update the whole infrastructure into separate sewers,
which is costly and requires changes to a city’s entire
network;
2. Increase the retention capacity of the network.
Compared with underground retention tanks, this is
27

more economical, but requires part of the network
to be rebuilt;
3. Use real time controls to optimise the retention
capacity of the existing network or slow down the
water flow before it enters the sewers so as not to
overburden the infrastructure and therefore avoid
overflows.
NBS are cost-effective and resilient options inspired by
environmental principles. In urban planning, NBS focus
on how to improve infiltration systems, delay the run-off,
increase the storage capacity and add green areas to urban
municipalities, to manage runoff volumes and peak flow.
These NBSs provide sustainable, multi-purpose, resource
efficient and flexible alternatives for water control by
working at the source of the flow, rather than letting it
accumulate. Examples of NBS are green roofs, retention
ponds, infiltration trenches or rain gardens.
According to a study by the European Commission (JRC
2016), green infrastructure is as good or, in some cases,
performs better than the traditional grey infrastructure
used for flood protection and water purification in urban
areas, for a similar or even lower initial cost. Green
infrastructure also provides additional benefits, such as
wildlife support and recreation areas for people, with
significant impact on socio-economic factors and the well-
being of the community.
In the following, we study four cases of NBS being
implemented at local level in Europe demonstrating how
municipalities can cope with excessive rainfall and heat
whilst avoiding costly remedies and improving citizen
engagement with NBS.
28
photo: EUREAU
Malmø: The Venice of Sweden!
The Swedish city of Malmø boasts an impressive six-
kilometre network of canals and water channels as well
as ten retention ponds. The NBS collect rain water in
natural ditches and reservoirs before channelling it into
a conventional sewer system. Flooding in Malmø was also
solved through the use of green roofs. Now, on average, 90
per cent of the storm water (ECAP 2014) goes into the open
storm urban water system. As a result, the total annual
runoff volume is reduced by 20 per cent due to evaporation.
Malmø illustrates how excess of rain water can easily be
absorbed by a more efficient storm management system
using NBS.
Cool Thessaloniki
Southern European countries face different challenges
when it comes to water management, namely the increased
heat in urban areas. Thessaloniki developed a model for
sustainable urban design and effectively redeveloped its
open spaces with green infrastructure (Integrated Green
Cities 2014). The improvement focused on infiltration
capacity in the downtown Chrimatistiriou square, to make
it an urban bioclimatic tool (Greece Is 2016) through planting
trees for shade and installing fountains for recreation and
cooler air. Another benefit from NBS is reduced runoff
during rain events and cooler temperatures during the
summer, something that any municipality located in a hot
climate could benefit from.
Copen-green-en
The case of Copenhagen offers some cost effective NBS.
In 2013, new climate legislation in Denmark (Danish
Government 2013) focused, amongst other goals, on the
development of sustainable surface solutions. Surface
solutions transform an urban area with an impermeable
surface into an urban water body with water flows and
functions which can be integrated into the wider catchment
such as the sewers. An evaluation in May 2017 (Haase et al.
2017) of the projects, brought under this regulation, showed
that the cost of these green solutions is one quarter of the
cost of implementing one of the traditional underground
pipe solutions. NBS in Copenhagen include the installation
of green roads and the greening of local squares to increase
retention of CO2 and the creation of a downtown rain
garden and cloudburst storage outside of the city to absorb
excess water (ECAP 2016). Overall, these green solutions
present a cheaper alternative to grey infrastructures and
many could be replicated elsewhere.
Swales in Wales
Between 2015 and 2020, the Welsh programme RainScape
(Welsh Water 2018) aims to remove the equivalent of 25.000
rooftops-worth of runoff water. Acknowledging that most
sewers have to cope with both surface water and urban
waste water, the risk of sewer-flooding and pollution is
inherent in the design of grey water infrastructure. Included
in the Water2050 strategic responses to improve the
resilience of local communities, RainScape invested GBP80
million in NBS, knowing that building additional storage
tanks and pipes would have been more expensive and not as
sustainable. Through the creation of porous paving, swales
and grass channels, the project helped to reduce pollution
as well as operational pressure in water management and
improve the consumer’s trust. The programme supported
communities in becoming more resilient to climate change.
Citizens, including children, were engaged directly in the
implementation of the project, (Welsh Water 2013). This
different approach to urban planning also attracted media
interest. Far more than just urban policy, we see in the above
examples how NBS can also help to boost the engagement
of the communities in policy making and in shaping their
urban environment.
public, literally greening the urban space. Involving citizens
and including media coverage can help to secure the
necessary investments.
An advantage of NBS over alternatives lies in its cost.
Even if investment is needed, it is on average similar to
or lower than what would be required for building huge
retention tanks or full new systems. Experience shows that
maintenance is a key aspect that is sometimes neglected.
The point of maintenance is to keep the full capacity of
the infrastructures intact between rainfall events. This
means that even if NBS are more cost-effective than grey
infrastructures, they have to be foreseen in long-term
urban policies, and not implemented as a simple, quick fix.
Conclusion
To face the changes of climate and environmental conditions,
urban managers at all levels should seriously consider NBS
solutions as part of the overall approach. Experiences in
Europe show that, when integrated in urban planning, NBS
contribute to reducing the peak flow and the runoff volume
of rain water. They offer a cost-effective alternative to the
implementation of single sewers and mitigate effectively
the impacts of climate change.
Furthermore, NBS redefine the place of water networks
in local communities. NBS require local level acceptance
and long-term urban planning with public responsibility.
Examples demonstrate the need for all citizens to
participate and benefit from making a positive and lasting
mark on the environment, all in the name of sustainable
water management.

How to make NBS work

From these examples, we can infer three main conclusions

on how to integrate NBS into urban planning: on policy,
public involvement and investment.

Changes in weather patterns are too serious to be left

unaddressed. Political will at local level has to drive
initiatives, not extreme events and flooded infrastructures.
As regards the European Union, European directives, such
as the Water Framework Directive, Urban Waste Water
Treatment Directive, can be another source of impetus
especially regarding the ongoing evaluations and potential
future revisions. This asks for clear and focused governance
structures, for example combining river basin management
and urban planning in common initiatives.

Integration and a long-term vision for urban planning are

essential when it comes to water management. Public
awareness and engagement are key as local communities
can be part of the process, as actors and users of the
network. Moreover, NBS are tangible and visible to the

29
References

ECAP (European Climate Adaptation Platform, Climate-ADAPT) 2014.

Urban storm water management in Augustenborg, Malmö’ European
Climate Adaptation Platform website https://climate-adapt.eea.
europa.eu/metadata/case-studies/urban-storm-water-management-
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ECAP (European Climate Adaptation Platform, Climate-ADAPT) 2016.

The economics of managing heavy rains and stormwater in Copenhagen
– The Cloudburst Management Plan. European Climate Adaptation
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case-studies/the-economics-of-managing-heavy-rains-and-stormwater-
in-copenhagen-2013-the-cloudburst-management-plan (accessed 12
December 2018).

EEA 2017. European Environment Agency – Mean precipitation; Indicator

Assessment. Prod-ID: IND-91-en Also known as: CLIM 002. January 2017.
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european-precipitation-2/assessment (accessed 12 December 2018).

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2018).

Haase, D., Kabisch, S., Haase, A., Andersson, E., Banzhaf, E., Baró, F., Wolff,
M. 2017 ‘Greening cities – To be socially inclusive? About the alleged
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policy, 64, 41-48

Integrated Green Cities 2014. Programme: 2007 - 2013 Greece - Bulgaria

(EL-BG). Keep.eu website https://www.keep.eu/keep/project-ext/12641/
INTEGRATED%20GREEN%20CITIES (accessed 12 December 2018).

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for water pollution control. Highlighting hidden benefits. Ecosystem Services,
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pii/S2212041616303370 (accessed 12 December 2018).

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carbon society. online PDF https://ens.dk/sites/ens.dk/files/Analyser/
danishclimatepolicyplan_uk.pdf (accessed 12 December 2018).

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Susdrain website https://www.susdrain.org/case-studies/case_studies/
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com/en/My-Wastewater/RainScape.aspx (accessed 12 December 2018).

photo: RIO+ Centre

30

Charging For The Use of Bulk Water In Rio De Janeiro: Analysing A Sustainable Water Management System
Adriana de Lima Bocaiuva
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Faced with the worsening scarcity and degradation of
water resources, the question of the quality and quantity
of fresh water available for human supply and other
uses occupies an increasingly wide space in the arena
of environmental policy. This has caused the uprising
recognition of the universal right to water.
Ensuring the availability and sustainable management of
water for all is at the core of the human right to water. This
has been a focus of international environmental debates
since the first global water conference, in 1977, when
UN Mar del Plata Conference declared that all peoples
have the right to access drinking water. In the following
decades, several global policies and conferences have
addressed this theme, leading to the official recognition
of the human right to water and sanitation stated by
the UN Resolution 64/292 adopted on 28th July 2010.
The UN-Water Water Quality Policy Brief (2011) concludes
that protecting water quality will guarantee a future,
where clean and protected watercourses will reduce
the operation costs for industries, farms and cities,
enabling them to operate more economically and focus
on meeting other basic human needs.
Following this, in 2015, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development adopted among the Sustainable
Development Goals the aims to achieve universal and
equitable access to safe and affordable water for all
by 2030, integrated water resources management at
all levels by 2030, and to protect and restore water-
related ecosystems by 2020 (SDG6). To achieve this,
the UN Development Programme recommends the
photo: ttps://pxhere.com/en/photo/1417284
implementation of a participatory Integrated Water
Resources Management (IWRM) and states that effective
water governance is the key to water security based on
protection, allocation and sharing of water resources at
basin and sub-basin levels where politics, bureaucracy and
communities deal with problems at local and basin scale.
Box 1: Water Security
Water security is the “capacity of a population to safeguard
sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable
quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being,
and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection
against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters,
and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and
political stability.” (UN Water 2013)
Inspired by the international water resources management
evolution, Brazilian Federal Water Law (Law 9.433/97)
inaugurated the National Water Resources Policy (NWRP),
introducing participatory management tools by water basin,
such as water resources plans, granting and charging for
the use of bulk water.
The NWRP is based on the principles and foundations
that water is not only a fundamental element but is also
a limited natural resource and a public domain endowed
with economic value. As such, the resource, according
to NWRP, should have its multiple use guaranteed (with
the prioritization of human and animal consumption)
through decentralised management as well as through
the participation of public agents, users and communities
31
(Neves; Whateley and Bocaiuva 2016).
At the subnational level, Brazilian states are free to
implement state-level water resource management plans,
in accordance with their respective state water policies. In
this sense, the State of Rio de Janeiro established the State
Water Resources Policy (SWPR), contemplating the same
instruments provided by the NWRP and reassuring that
water is an essential element for life. Subsequently, the
charge for the use of water under state control is regulated
by the state Law 4.247/2003. The state environmental
agency implements the process of granting and charging
for bulk water use in all the watersheds of Rio de Janeiro,
uniformly setting the same method for the entire state.
This paper aims to describe this process and highlight the
main obstacles of the implementation of this mechanism
by Rio de Janeiro state.
Objectives and principles of the Brazilian charge system
for bulk water use
Based on the principles and foundations of the NWRP, the
charging for the use of water resources - in addition to
recognising water as an economic good and giving the user
an indication of its real value - should encourage rationing
water use and guarantee resources for the financing of the
programs and interventions contemplated in the water
resources plans.
In this sense, the levy on the use of bulk water is not a tax
but a tool for achieving the NWRP’s objectives, based on the
principles of the user-payer -PUP and polluter-payer-PPP.
As Prieur (1996) describes, the first outline of the PPP –
inspired by the economic theory that social costs must be
internalised, that is, integrated into the costs of production
- was inaugurated in the Recommendation of the Council
of the Organization for Cooperation and Economic
Development (OECD) of 1972 on Principles Concerning the
International Economic Aspects of Environmental Policies.
It reiterates the recommendation for the implementation
of the PPP in other documents such as the Council
Recommendation on the Use of Economic Instruments in
Environmental from1991 and in the Principle 16 of the Rio
Declaration from 1992.
Inspired by the PPP and PUP, Brazilian law states that
the value of the levy on the use of water should take into
consideration: the volume of water withdrawn and, in the
case of releases of sewage and other liquid or gaseous,
the physic-chemical, biological and toxicity characteristics
of the release.
Following the OECD water management principles, amounts
collected should be applied primarily in the hydrographic
basin in which they were generated, and should finance
studies, programs, and projects that positively change
the quality and quantity of the flow of a body of water.
Faithful to the foundations of decentralised management,
the NWRP assures the basin committees their participation
in the establishment of the mechanisms of collection of the
32
levy for the use of water resources, through suggestions of
values, coefficients and the establishment of hypotheses
of uses that are considered insignificant.
Pricing bulk water use has been implemented for more than
four decades in France and inspired the Brazilian NWRP.
The French charging system appears to be effective in
promoting sustainability and the efficient operation of the
infrastructure (Barth et al. 1987). The German system opts
for sharing investment and maintenance costs of common
infrastructure at the river basin scale, dating back to the
19th century. More recently, some countries, like the USA
and Australia, implemented a market-based strategy,
through pricing water permits and allowing their trade.
Implantation of the State of Rio de Janeiro’s charging
system for the use of water
In 2003, the state of Rio de Janeiro centralised the collection
mechanism for the water levy, implementing the same
methodology for all the state’s river basins, on a provisional
basis. The methodology and the values of the levy were
validated on the condition of effectively implementing the
state committees and elaboratiing the respective River
Basin Plans. However, after more then a decade of charging
for the use of water, and despite the establishment of basin
committees in all hydrographic regions of the state, there
has been practically no change in the methodology nor
readjustments of the originally stipulated Unit Public Price
(UPP), used as the basis for the calculation formula adopted
by the system, set up as followed: Total Monthly Charge =
Qcap x [K0 + K1 + (1-K1) x (1-K2K3)] x PPU
• Qcap corresponds to the volume of water collected
during a month (m3/ month).
• K0 expresses the unit price multiplier for capture (less
than 1.0)
• K1 expresses the consumption coefficient for the user
activity in question, i.e. the ratio between the volume
consumed and the volume captured by the user or
the index corresponding to the part of the volume
captured that does not return to the source
• K 2 expresses the percentage of the volume of treated
effluents in relation to the total volume of effluents
produced or the coverage index of treatment of
domestic or industrial effluents, that is, the ratio
between the treated effluent flow and the gross
effluent flow
• K 3 expresses the efficiency level of reduction of
OBD (Oxygen Biochemical Demand) at the Effluent
Treatment Station
• UPP is the Unitary Public Price (BRL/m3)
Therefore, the methodology implemented uniformly in
all the basins of the state, since the publication of Law
4.247/2003, remains unchanged with the following UPP and
coefficients for capture, consumption and water disposal:
• Ko = 0,4 (coefficient for captured volume);
• K1 = Consumed Q / captured Q (coefficient for volume
consumed, informed by the user);
• K 2 = Q release treated / Q Untreated release (coefficient
of the percentage traded and relation to the volume
of effluents produced)
• K 3 = 1- (treated effluent / raw effluent) (OBD reduction
efficiency level)
• Unitary Public Price (PPU) = BRL0.02 per cubic metre;
• the third part of the formula, referring to the reduction
of ODB, represents the relationship between the
treated effluent flow and the gross effluent flow (K 2),
and K 3 expresses the efficiency level of reduction of
ODB (Biochemical Oxygen Demand) in the Effluent
Treatment Station.
The State Water Resources Plan (SWRP) foresees a demand
for investments of BRL1 billion per year by 2030, distributed
among the hydrographic regions of the state. The amount
collected since the beginning of the implementation of
the collection system (2004 - 2015) totals just over BRL202
million. And from this amount, only BRL65 million were
actually disbursed by the committees to carry out sanitation
works (BRL 31 million) for environmental recovery (BRL8
million) and planning and management (BRL26 million).
Considering the volume of resources collected from
the use of water per basin to date, and the minimum
amount required to achieve the projects foreseen in the
SWRP up to 2030 (BRL1 billion / year), the levy collection
mechanism for the use of bulk water does not achieve its
goals. The collection of resources should guarantee the
implementation of the management system in all basins,
endowing the committees with secretariats and basin plans.
These expectations have been frustrated by the system’s
ineptitude in overcoming obstacles to the consolidation of
the goals of the National Plan for Water Resources (PNRH
in Portuguese abbreviation). Nor does the basic value of
the methodology adopted, the Unit Price, of only two cents
per cubic metre of water consumed, induce rationing and /
or perception of the real value of water. Thus, the method
does not strengthen the prevention of pollution nor does
it provide appropriate market incentives for the efficient
use and allocation of water, while protecting the interests
of the poor and those without access to markets.
The controversial centralised process of implementing
the collection for water use in the state of Rio de Janeiro
has generated a series of legal disputes for usurping
competences of the basin committees, dissonant to the
NWRP’s foundations. On the other hand, the process was
successful in implementing the collection in the totality of
the watersheds of the state.
It is important to register the inertia in the process of
revision of this methodology by the basin committees, after
more than 10 years of the instrument’s implementation
in the state. Even a monetary restatement was proposed
to guarantee the replacement of inflationary losses as a
measure of the maintenance of the original value stipulated.
The accumulated inflation correction index for the period
of 2004-2015 (IGP-M FGV) would be 200 per cent. This
methodology needs to be revised in order to incorporate
parameters that induce a more rational use of water, the
preservation of springs and the incorporation of new users
to the system.
Conclusion
After nearly two decades of the inauguration of the new
water resources management policy in Rio de Janeiro, the
collection of resources by charging a levy for bulk water
use has not yet been able to reach basin plan goals and
the consequent guarantee of the Human Right to water.
Participatory and decentralised water management
requires a change of mentality, behaviours and attitudes,
which demands a long process of adaptation. In this sense,
the implementation of the Rio de Janeiro Water Policy
reveals the long path that collegial processes face. The
main challenges are to overcome the inertia in promoting
institutional changes and to ensure greater agility and
flexibility in the review and adjustments of the collection
methodology as well as in the establishment or collection
of the values collected in the basin.
The principles and foundations that underpin the creation
of this mechanism must guide its application to induce the
rational use of water and guarantee the necessary resources
to achieve SDG6 on the universal and equitable access to
safe and affordable water for all by 2030, integrated water
resources management at all levels by 2030, and to protect
and restore water-related ecosystems by 2020
To discuss river basin committees in Brazil is to introduce the
process of implementing a federative management model
that must include the society in its regional representations,
promoting the social control of the allocation of resources
and processes. Throughout this movement, a path is traced
in the construction of social capital for the establishment of
water governance for a future, where clean and protected
watercourses will guarantee the fundamental human right
to water and other basic needs.
33
References

Barth, F. T., C. T. Pompeu, H. D. Fill, C.E.M. Tucci, and others 1987. Modelos
para Gerenciamento de Recursos Hídricos. São Paulo, Nobel/ABRH.

IGP-M FGV. Portalbrasil website. http://www.portalbrasil.net/igpm.htm

(accessed 20 December 2018)

Naves, Estela Maria; S. C. Whateley, Marussia; Bocaiuva, Adriana

2016. Quem cuida da água? Governança da água doce: a moldura
jurídico-institucional nacional, Aliança pela água website https://www.
aliancapelaagua.com.br/wp-content /uploads/2017/04/relatorio-
governanca.pdf (accessed 20 December 2018)

Prieur, Michael 1996. Droit de L’environnment. 3rd ed. Paris, Dalloz.

UN-WATER 2013. ‘What is water security?” UN WATER website, http://www.

unwater.org/publications/water-security-global-water-agenda (accessed
20 December 2018)

Fifth World Water Forum. 2009 Process: Istanbul Ministerial Statement.

Fifth World Water Forum, Istanbul, Turkey.

photo: Adriana Bocaiuva

34

Drainage Infrastructure in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area, Mexico: The Case Of The Pluviales Project
Dr. Ismael Aguilar – Barajas
Department of Economics and Water Centre for Latin America and the Caribbean, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico
The Monterrey Metropolitan Area (MMA), with a population
of over 4.5 million people, is a major Mexican metropolis
located in the north east of Mexico (Figure 1). The proper
and efficient functioning of its drainage infrastructure is
key for the population, the urban environment, as well
as the local and national economy. The MMA is situated
within a semi-arid region, which is also prone to hurricanes
and tropical storms. Even moderate rains exhibit the
vulnerability of the city to flooding and its ability to cause
serious damage urban mobility, physical assets, and the
loss of human lives. These rains, along with the pattern of
formal and informal urbanisation over high areas, generate
flash floods. In 1988, the presence of Hurricane Gilbert cost
the lives of more than 200 people and severe damages to
the infrastructure of the metropolis. The Santa Catarina
River, which crosses the city from west to east, overflowed
its banks (Figure 2).
The social concern over these losses, influenced the
undertaking of two major infrastructure projects. One of
them was the construction of a dam in the upper part of
the City, to catch, store and manage these flash floods and
downpours. This project is known as the Rompepicos Dam.
The second project was the construction of a large system
of main and secondary drain collectors, The Pluviales, which
is the focus of this paper.
The Pluviales project
The Pluviales Project was designed in the context of a
highly sensitive socio-political environment and required
interrelated legal and financial arrangements. At the end of
the 1990s, deficient urban pluvial drainage forced the state
photo: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1104996
government to draft a programme that would address this
issue. In the light of the human lives lost and the adverse
impacts in terms of mobility, the pressure from the media
generated urgency to act (El Norte 2002). Highly specialised
studies – which involved aspects of soil mechanics, runoff
patterns at the micro basin level, and the location of human
settlements in risky areas - were carried out leading to
the creation of the Integral System for the Management of
Pluvial Waters (SIMAP in Spanish) (Canales Clariond 2011).
The responsibility for storm runoff management rested with
the state government Secretariat of Urban Development
and Public Works (SDUOP in Spanish) and the metropolitan
municipalities, although none of these entities had the
technical nor financial resources to do much about this
issue. However, on 16 August 2000, the state congress
changed the state water and sewerage authority, Servicios
de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey - SADM’s statutes in order
to allow it to embark on an ambitious storm drainage
infrastructure project using its own revenues to finance
this enterprise (Aguilar Barajas; Sisto and Ramírez 2015).
In May 2001, the state government formally presented the
Integral System for the Management of Pluvial Waters -
SIMAP. In 2002, SIMAP had identified 420 risk points (El
Norte 2002). SDUOP coordinated initiatives with other state
and municipal entities, as well as with federal government
agencies – like the National Water Commission, the
Secretariat of Urban Development, and the Secretariat of
Social Development. The SIMAP experience showed the
importance of developing a public policy in a coordinated
and integrative approach.
35
A major premise of SIMAP´s work centred upon some
environmentally-friendly approaches to urban drainage
management, like reforestation in the upper parts and
within the MMA. These reforestation works were done
in a natural national protected area, with the additional
support of the federal and state environment agencies,
giving a good example of transversal work across different
institutions.
Between 2002 and 2009, three billion pesos were destined
to that end, 80 per cent from SADM’s own treasury and
the rest coming from the federal government. About 200
kilometres of main and secondary drain collectors were
laid, reducing the risk of flooding, in the city’s most exposed
locations, by 93 per cent. It is estimated that The Pluviales
benefited around 1.2 million inhabitants (Flores Longoria
and Maldonado 2009).
Figure 1: Location of the Monterrey Metropolitan Area in north eastern Mexico.
Source: Aguilar Barajas, Sisto and Ramírez (2015)
The Pluviales project and Sustainable Development
Goals
The Pluviales project maintains strong interconnections
between social, economic and environmental dimensions.
As already mentioned, The Pluviales was the result of
pressing social concern. The significance of this metropolis
to Mexico, means that this project had a profound national
economic rationale. In order to undertake The Pluviales,
complex institutional and financial arrangements had to be
made. This strategic infrastructure also helped to prevent
and reduce an environmental and public health crisis.
Dealing with a strong climate variability in the region –
characterised by long droughts and the presence of heavy
rains and hurricanes – has always been a challenge for the
MMA.
1. Newspaper El Horizonte, 17 October 2013. With the then rate of exchange, this amounts to USD644 millions
36
More specifically, the Pluviales project exhibits clear
links with several of the sustainable development goals
(SDG). This case study shows the benefits of investing in
stormwater management to better handle urban pluvial
flooding. If this is done properly, then stormwater provides
enormous social, economic and environmental benefits
to the metropolis, as was recognised when SIMAP was
established. Water supply is a specific example. As a
matter of fact, hurricanes have been generous providers
of water to the metropolis. The project has also contributed
to making the MMA a more inclusive, safe, resilient and
sustainable area.
Moreover, there has been a beneficial reduction in the
number of deaths and the economic losses to both people
and economic activities. The project has contributed to the
protection of critical infrastructure and poor people in risky
situations. Concerning the adoption and implementation of
climate change adaptation, The Pluviales are called to play
an even greater role for the MMA, in the light of the real
threat of more intense flooding.
The experience with this project also demonstrates that
improving the drainage infrastructure/preparation for
stormwater could bring about major additional benefits
for other SDGs. For example, reducing the stormwater /
seasonal flooding will positively impact on education such
as school attendance, due to the youth having less trouble
to get to school and schools not being flooded. Its impact on
work and economic growth in the way that people can get
to work easier, have less difficulties to provide services and
facilitate trade, and count on reliable water and finally on
health and well-being, by saving human lives and reducing
health hazards.
Policy Recommendations
There is the urgent need to sustain and improve the
drainage infrastructure of the city and to handle pluvial
waters in a better way. This need is also felt in almost every
rainy season. For instance, the early rains of August and
September 2018, and the likely impact of future hurricanes,
sent the warning that the city needs to rehabilitate its
pluvial drainage infrastructure, and expand the work that
was done in connection with the Pluviales project.
After almost 18 years of this programme, it is obvious
that maintenance and expansion of this infrastructure are
needed. Its financing will require innovative approaches,
combining governmental funding from the federal to the
municipal level along with private and social participation.
Five years ago, it was estimated the metropolis was ten-
years of progress behind the level of infrastructure that it
required to handle pluvial waters. Experts consulted then
estimated the financial needs amounted to MXN8300
million.1 In September 2018, the former director of SIMAP
considered the risk of 200 to 300 new flooding points
(Villasáez 2018).
There is thus the urgency for more comprehensive urban
planning, in which greater policy co-ordination is a must.
Urbanisation has extended over areas that in the past
enabled the infiltration of rainwater. Stricter regulation in
this regard needs to be enacted. Finally, as in other cities
of Mexico and Latin America, it must be recognised that
pluvial water management is also related to solid waste
management and the improvement of them could benefit
both.
References
Aguilar-Barajas, I., Sisto, N.P., and Ramírez-Orozco, A.I. 2015. Agua para
Monterrey.- Logros, retos y oportunidades para Nuevo León y México (Water
for Monterrey.- Achievements, challenges and opportunities), Monterrey, N.L.,
APP for Tecnológico de Monterrey, Centro del Agua para América Latina
y el Caribe, Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey.
Canales Clariond, F. 2011. Sí se puede. crónica de un cambio (It can be done.
Chronicle of a change), Grijalbo, México City.

El Norte (2002) whose first pages provided an acute account of the

damages. See, for example, the article of 21 July, 2002, p 6A.

Flores Longoria, M, and Maldonado, E. 2009. Nuevo León. La Odisea del

Agua (Nuevo Leon. The Odissey of Water), Monterrey, N.L. Gobierno del
Estado and SADM

OECD 2013. OECD Reviews of Risk Management Policies: Mexico 2013: Review
of the Mexican National Civil Protection System, Paris, OECD Publishing
http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264192294-en (accessed 18 December
2018)

Villasáez, J. 2018. “Tras ´Gilberto´ hay avances y retrocesos” El Norte

photo: The Santa Catarina River during Hurricane Gilbert, September 17 1988 Website https://www.elnorte.com/edicionimpresa/aplicacionei/Pagina.
source: Courtesy from El Norte html?fecha=20180917 (payed access 18 December 2018)

Concluding Remarks

A new governance is required to manage the pluvial waters

of the MMA. This new institutional arrangement must take
into account the strategic role of this metropolis in the
Mexican economy. This implies that stronger support is
needed from the federal government to meet the financial
requirements to improve the urban drainage of pluvial
waters. This new governance needs to also take into account
the climate and hydrological contexts. A basin framework
is useful in the design of more comprehensive strategies.
It seems advisable to consider the establishment of a new
SIMAP, with sufficient decision-making power to design and
implement these strategies.

At last, greater coordination at the metropolitan level will be

required. It is essential, however, to consider the restrictive
framework under which most municipalities operate: only
three years in office with limited financial resources. This
situation makes them easy targets of speculative capital to
authorise urban projects, which are not compatible with
sound principles for the handling of pluvial waters. In a
more integrated approach, it would require the design of
a risk-based management approach rather than reactive
policies. It is a matter of economic, social and environmental
responsibility. At the end of the day, a better urban drainage
system will contribute to a more sustainable metropolis.

37
 rio.mais@undp.org - www.riopluscentre.org

© 2018 World Centre for Sustainable Development