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Video 1.0: Facts About Water

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Water Supply and Sanitation Policy in Developing Countries Part 1: Understanding Complex Problems

Université de Manchester

4.5 (98 notes) | 6.8K étudiants inscrits

Our course explores what can be done to solve the complex problem that half a billion people worldwide do not have improved water supplies and two billion do not have improved sanitation. We look forward to you joining us. We want to help you develop the skills you need to address this major global challenge of the 21st century. Our course has informative video lectures and guest interviews with leading water policy scholars and practitioners. We will provide you with discussion forum topic prompts, which will invite you to engage with other learners from around the globe. Our MOOC will also ask you to attempt weekly quizzes and a challenging assignment that tackles a real water and sanitation problem in a difficult setting. Please watch this trailer: https://youtu.be/Q-HmaCZNd0k

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4.5 (98 notes)

5 stars
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JB

Apr 08, 2018

all good content, though the formatting in the submission box limited, would prefer to just submit PDFs. Other than that, I got a lot out of it. .\n\nThanks

QK

Mar 07, 2019

Very useful, I understood how governments and private agencies works positively and negatively for water and sanitation projects.

À partir de la leçon

Introducing Key Facts about Water and Sanitation Services

Welcome to the course - Introduction6:50

Video 0.1: Welcome to AMBS - Fiona Devine7:43

Video 1.0: Facts About Water7:11

Video 1.1: Global Water and Sanitation Coverage10:46

Video 1.2: Infrastructure Coverage (Electricity, Sewerage, Water, Telephone)15:09

Video 1.3: Forecasts of Coverage9:53

Video 1.4: Conversation with Clarissa Brocklehurst19:00

Enseigné par

Prof Dale Whittington
Professor
Dr Duncan Thomas
Lecturer

Transcription

[BLANK_AUDIO]

I'd like to begin with a discussion of six facts about water.

Fact number one, building and managing

water infrastructure is a huge societal enterprise.

This images shows the three Gorges Dam in China.

It cost over 20 billion US dollars to build.

In the United States we have over

50,000 water utilities and over 30,000 wastewater, utilities.

And we have many dams, irrigation

schemes, flood levies and other water infrastructure.

If we thought of water as an industrial sector

it'd be one of the largest sectors in the economy.

The world bank has estimated that a child born today in Ethiopia has capital

assets, both man-made and natural capital, worth about $2,000.

This is her endowment to build upon and get ahead in life.

A child born in the United States or Europe arrives in the

world with a share of the nation's capital that's worth, about $500,000.

That's, 250 times more, than an Ethiopian child.

And a substantial portion of a US child's capital endowment is infrastructure.

And a major portion of this.

Is in the water and sanitation sector, fact number

two, pipe water networks, are very capital intensive, we think

of capital intensity in terms of the amount of

capital needed to produce a unit of output or revenue.

The water industry is not only one of the

largest sectors, but also one of the most capital intensive.

Only petrochemicals and power generation have comparable levels

of capital intensity, to the water and sanitation sector.

The high capital intensity of the water

sector means that financing becomes extremely important.

A community may want a new piped water and sewer system and people, or

gov-government may be willing to pay the

full cost of these services as they're rendered.

But this is not sufficient.

The community must find the financing to pay the

upfront capital cost for the construction of the project.

When China started building its industrial infrastructure, in the 1970s and 80s,

it partially solved its financing problem with barter deals with foreign partners.

China promised to repay loans from

Japanese and Western companies it, with the

output of these industrial and natural resource

projects, in which the investments were made.

But these kinds of barter deals were difficult in

the water sector, because water itself is not easily traded.

This made construction of water infrastructure more

challenging, because the financing was harder to arrange.

Fact number three, household demand for small quantities of water.

Is, pricing elastic?

Economists as far back as Adam Smith have puzzled over the economic value of water.

They compared the value of water, a necessity of life, and its price, which

was typically very low to diamonds, a luxury good with a very high price.

And they puzzled why the price of water did not reflect its value to life.

This diamond water paradox was resolved,

by the concept of diminishing marginal utility.

Small amounts of water essential for life, but these

quantities, for these quantities demand is very pricey and elastic.

This means people will pay almost anything for small

quantities of water if they have to do so.

I've seen situations where poor households spend 10

to 20% of their income for small quantities of

water and I've been to places where a liter

of water cost more than a liter of gasoline.

However, the fact that household demand for small quantities is pricing

elastic, does not necessarily imply that demand for improved water quality.

Is price inelastic.

And we're going to come back to this, in the course.

Fact number four, storage is easy, transport can be very expensive.

Note that this is just the opposite of electricity.

Storage of electricity is hard, but transport is easy.

Reservoirs can be used to store water.

Households can store relatively, water relatively

cheaply in storage tanks and systerns.

But water's very heavy.

And this makes transport difficult.

When water must be lifted or

pumped, transporting it often become prohibitively expensive.

This image, is the Roman Aqueduct at Pont Du Gard in France.

Aqueducts, were possible because water ran downhill

from mountainous regions to cities at lower elevations.

But these civil engineering projects were

still extremely capital intensive and expensive.

One of the important implications of the fact that transporting

water is difficult, is that water problems are largely local.

Long distance transport of water is not likely to be an

economically efficient solution to local,

water scarcity problems, in most situations.

Well this doesn't mean that there are no linkages between

the water problems in the micro economy, or the global economy.

The 20-level, 2011 floods in Bangkok distributed global supply chains.

Professor Tony Allen at Kings College is

introduced us to the concept of virtual water.

The quantity of water embedded in products.

Cereal crops require water as an input, for their production.

And countries that import cereal are effectively

importing water embedded in the cereal, but it

is much cheaper to ship cereal than it is, to ship water to grow cereal.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

Fact number five, water is a renewable resource.

We use water, but we don't actually consume water.

Water is not like oil or coal, which are non-renewable resources.

We can change the quality and location of water as it

moves through the hydrological cycle, but we can't, can't destroy it.

Sometimes we speak of ground water, aqua versus being non-renewable.

This means that water is withdrawn from the aqua for it's not recharged, but that

doesn't mean the water obstructive from su,

such aqua versus remove from the hydrological cycle.

[BLANK_AUDIO].

Fact number six.

Water is not just an economic good.

This image shows the baptism of Christ by John the Baptist.

Water plays a spiritual role in the

traditions of all the great, world religions.

Water is also important for cultural, social,

and environmental reasons, not just for economic uses.

So when we work in the water sector, we need

to be aware that water elicits powerful passions and emotions.

[BLANK_AUDIO].

Thank you for watching this video.

In the next video, we're going to look at

global statistics about, who has improved water and sanitation services.

In different parts of the world.

[BLANK_AUDIO]

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