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Phnom Penh, the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia, lies on the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle and Bassac rivers. These rivers are the main source of freshwater for the city’s population of about 1.3 million. Many of the Asian cities’ publicly managed water utilities perform below their potential. Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority (PPWSA) undertook major reforms and transformed a war-ravaged water utility into a commendable model that stands for other cities to emulate

This paper presents an overview of the benefits of urban groundwater use, together with some harmful and persistent problems that groundwater can present for urban development. This is a Perspectives Paper, meant to incite a discussion on important issues related to water and development.

Water security is under threat in urban areas. The very nature of urbanization contributes to water stress: rapid population growth, inadequate planning, pollution, poverty, and competing demands on the resource. This briefing note lays out the principles of integrated urban water management as a means to meet that threat. Briefing notes are two-page summaries on selected topics. They are prepared by GWP’s Global Secretariat and its partners.

This policy brief outlines how IUWM can provide a framework for planning, designing, and managing urban water systems. The brief also encourages policy makers to consider the water cycle as a whole when cities are being developed.Policy briefs provide policy makers with information on water resources management. They are written by the GWP Technical Committee, a group of internationally recognised professionals in integrated water resources management.

The quality of groundwater recharging the Guarani aquifer is threatened in some areas by rapid land-use changes, and locally by rapid urbanisation. Action was taken by the World Bank through a GEF-funded project on the ‘Sustainable Development & Environmental Protection of the Guarani Aquifer’, which included scientific studies, institutional provisions and transboundary groundwater management. This case study reinforces the lesson to ‘think globally but act locally’. 

Karachi was characterised by inadequate water and sanitation services and wasteful and injudicious use of water by consumers. To address these issues, the Karachi Water Partnership was formed as a platform for collective action by all concerned stakeholders to better manage water resources through IWRM. The experience illustrates that there can be great value in simply improving the existing delivery mechanisms as a compliment to the implementation of new ideas.

The city of Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh is mainly receiving its water from Upper Lake. However, in the past decades, the water quality has steadily been deteriorating. This has led the government to take action and implement an integrated lake conservation program. The case demonstrates that all the stakeholders, especially, Urban Local Bodies and the public representatives should be involved in the decision making from the very beginning of such projects. 

The Municipality of Talcahuano because of rapid urbanisation is subjected to natural resource degradation. Action was taken and a municipal strategy was created, assigning the municipality as the institution in charge of administering and combating natural resource degradation. This case illustrates the appropriateness of the municipal level of government in successfully addressing the recovery of water resources and environmental management.