POLICY HIGHLIGHTS
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Four questions to set urban water management on a sustainable path Cities in OECD countries would benefit from
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considering four interrelated questions:
How can cities and their rural surroundings best co-operate? Experience with catchment protection from harmful agricultural practices, or the use of
1.
Who should pay the water bill? Tariff structures
farm land as a buffer against floods, has highlighted
and business models for the delivery of water
the efficacy of innovative measures for urban-rural
services may need adjusting in order to secure stable
water management. National governments should
revenues in the face of declining water consumption.
provide incentives and institutional mechanisms
Governments should consider levying taxes on those
to foster the use of co-operative arrangements
(including land and property developers) who benefit
benefiting cities, upstream and downstream
from increased water security or who generate
communities, and ecosystems.
higher costs and externalities (e.g. owners of large impervious surfaces, such as roads or car parks). 2.
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How can cities govern urban water management? Three issues deserve particular attention. First,
How can cities make the best use of innovative
stakeholder engagement is key in the push for a
approaches to urban water management? Technical
fair distribution of water risks and costs in urban
innovation is flourishing, but the breadth and depth
water management, which can only be reached in
of the innovation are yet to be fully exploited.
practice when stakeholders are properly involved
Cities would benefit from having a wider latitude
in decision-making and implementation. Second,
to explore technologies that fit local contexts.
where they have been established, water regulators
Regulatory frameworks and economic instruments
have significantly contributed to transparency,
can certainly drive the diffusion of innovation,
credibility of decision-making and accountability to
but can also lock cities into sub-optimal technical
users. Third, advances in metropolitan governance
trajectories.
offer the ability to combine the different scales – from basin to catchment to individual buildings – and pool financial and technical resources across municipalities in a metropolitan area.
Figure 1. Criteria to cluster cities as regards to water Exposure to water risks
Urban features
Institutional architecture
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Prevailing water resource
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Affluence
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Fiscal autonomy
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Location of this water resource
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Endowment in energy sources
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Informal/soft co-ordination
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Reliability of the resource
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The city’s surroundings
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Inter-municipal authorities
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Geographical features
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The size of the population
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Supra-municipal authorities
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Urban dynamics
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Metropolitan cities
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Spatial patterns
Some responses will be generic, for example developing a long-term vision to guide short-term and piecemeal developments; stimulating initiatives by local entrepreneurs and various stakeholders; and addressing equity issues arising from water management. Others are more appropriate to specific issues for each individual city: demand management is more appropriate in a water-scarce environment, while distributed water
systems are more competitive when existing networks have reached their full capacity or reclaimed water can be used locally. The report identifies criteria which are relevant to cluster cities in homogeneous groups as regards to water management. Cities can use such criteria to situate themselves in relation to others.
OECD POLICY HIGHLIGHTS Water and cities - 3