The past decade has witnessed a major global shift in thinking about water, including the role that water infrastructure plays in sustainable development. This rethinking aims to balance better the social, economic, and environmental performance aspects in the development and management of large dams. Infrastructure strategies must complement strategies for water, environment, and energy security and for emerging concerns to reduce vulnerability in water resource systems to climate change on the horizon. Communication is central to multi-stakeholder dialogue and partnerships at all levels needed to achieve sustainability and governance reform in water resource management and infrastructure provision. At the same time, communication drives the advocacy to mobilize political will and public support for beneficial change and continuous improvement in practices. This case study emphasizes that is not only important to mobilize all opportunities to reconcile water demand and supply in river basins that are coming under increasing levels of water stress, but also to integrate effectively governance and anti-corruption reforms and sustainability improvements into all stages of the planning and project cycle adding value for stakeholders.

This Handbook offers 'how to' ideas to help infrastructure practitioners identify good practice improvements in communication, starting with the World Bank?s own expanding portfolio of dam projects.

This book advances the understanding and integration in operational terms of environmental flows (water allocation) into integrated water resources management (IWRM). Based on an in-depth analysis of 17 global water policy, plan, and project case studies, it addresses the highly contested complexities of environmentally responsible water resources development, broadens the global perspectives on "equitable sharing" and "sustainable use" of water resources, and expands the definitions of "benefits sharing" in high-risk water resources development. The book fills a major gap in knowledge on IWRM and forms an important contribution to the ongoing discourse on climate change adaptation in the water sector.

This title outlines a number of practical initiatives to strengthen the role of development communication in infrastructure projects. The authors aim to facilitate better quality projects and to build consensus on the type of governance reforms needed to fight corruption, drawing on the experience of development agencies like the World Bank and Transparency International. It starts by characterizing corruption vulnerabilities in infrastructure and proceeds to illustrate where communication has added value on a number of recent projects, both in regard to making the projects more sustainable and by incorporating anti-corruption measures into the project preparation and implementation. It draws on examples of mainly World Bank-supported projects from the road, transport, power, and water sectors in different governance contexts. Five standard-setting initiatives are then outlined, which focus on promoting best practice to better integrate development communication into the project cycles of World Bank-supported infrastructure projects.

This is a compilation of relevant practices of dealing with environmental and social issues during the planning, design and management of dams. The Compendium covers 9 topics selected by the multistakeholder Dams and Development Forum. It discusses the state of the art regarding dealing with the topics around the world. It shows how they are captured by regulatory frameworks and provides a number of examples illustrating how they have been implemented on the ground.--Publisher's description.

The book presents the history of water supply to Cape Town, leading up to the worst ever drought recorded, through political turmoil impacting on drought interventions and resulting in the adoption of an integrated water strategy. Regions reliant on water supply from rainfed dams have always been vulnerable to the impact of drought. This is exacerbated by the uncertainty of future rainfall, which is never guaranteed, and reliance is placed on modelling using historic data. While weather has always been variable, climate has been generally reliable. With anthropogenic activity causing changes in climate, the validity of modelling based on history is currently not fully trusted. Unless the storage capacity is sufficient to carry through numerous seasons of poor rainfall, even with water restrictions to match demand and supply in times of depleted rainfall, the risk of reservoirs running dry remains a threat.

The Hydropolitics of Dams charts the troubled waters of 'heavy engineering' approaches to ecosystem management, exploring the history, benefits and problems of large dams. It then explores diverse ecosystem-based approaches to management of human interactions with the water cycle, concluding that a synthesis of approaches is needed in future. The book also addresses political, economic and legal dimensions of water management. Featuring case studies from China, India and South Africa, this insightful new book argues that there are more appropriate physical and social technologies that can help to sustainably provide access to clean water for all.