Water for People

Water plays a critical role in public health, economic growth, climate resilience, and environmental sustainability. However, in many parts of the world, water and sanitation services remain unreliable, unaffordable, or unsafe. These deficiencies lead to significant human, economic, and environmental costs, especially for poor and vulnerable populations.

The challenge is compounded by population growth, climate change, urbanization, and inefficiency, which are placing mounting pressure on already fragile systems:

Shifting rainfall patterns, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and worsening pollution are disrupting service delivery and affecting the sustainability of water resources. In some areas, water scarcity is already limiting economic productivity and development.

Access to safe and reliable water supply remains a challenge in both urban and rural areas. In cities, aging infrastructure, high levels of non-revenue water, and rapid peri-urban expansion often outpace the capacity of utilities to respond. In rural areas, communities frequently depend on poorly maintained systems or informal service arrangements, which are often unreliable or unsafe.

Across both contexts, service gaps disproportionately affect women, children, and marginalized populations. A central issue is the need for comprehensive sector reform. Many service providers face inadequate financing, lack of cost recovery, and weak institutional capacity. Few utilities recover even the basic costs of operation and maintenance, and public investment remains far below the levels needed to meet rising demand.

Sanitation also remains one of the most off-track sectors globally.

Nearly half of those lacking basic services live in rural areas, and many still practice open defecation. In urban areas, many residents lack access to toilets that provide complete sanitation services. This contributes to disease, environmental pollution, and lost productivity. Poor sanitation is estimated to cost some countries several percentage points of GDP due to premature deaths, healthcare expenses, and reduced economic output.

Moreover, sanitation systems are a growing source of methane emissions, contributing approximately 5 percent of global totals. At the same time, improved systems for managing fecal sludge and wastewater can offer valuable resources—such as treated water, nutrients, and energy—especially in water-scarce areas. Addressing these challenges is essential for meeting the SDGs, improving equity, and building climate resilience.

The World Bank Group works to improve the quality and impact of its water supply, sanitation, and water reuse operations by connecting teams with global knowledge, technical expertise, and strategic partnerships. This support helps strengthen project design, inform business development, and enhance implementation through several key areas of engagement.

With growing concern over the chronic challenges undermining water supply and sanitation services, there has been growing recognition around the importance of policies, institutions, and regulation (PIR)—and water governance more generally. PIR are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to water and sanitation but need a considerable boost to be effective.

Since the adoption of the SDGs, there has been increasing global concern about the sustainWability of attempts to increase access to, and improve the quality of, water supply and sanitation (WSS) services. While the financial needs and technical are well known, there has typically been less appreciation of the transformational role of sector governance—that is, the laws, policies, regulations, institutions, and systems that can help mobilize financial and technical solutions and enhance their impact on WSS services.

The World Bank Group is promoting "new water" solutions that advance circular economy approaches—such as desalination, wastewater reuse, non-revenue water reduction, conservation measures, and nature-based solutions. These initiatives are supported through blended finance, guarantees, and other risk-sharing instruments.

To help accelerate progress, the Bank is convening a global Community of Practice to share best practices and explore financial and institutional models for desalination and wastewater reuse across varied geographic, environmental, and political contexts. This effort includes the development of guidance notes on key enablers such as policy, regulation, institutional frameworks, public-private partnerships, investment strategies, and service delivery in remote or underserved areas. Given the relative novelty of some of these approaches, advocacy and strategic communications are also being prioritized in collaboration with external partners.

The World Bank Group is advancing digital and data-driven approaches in the water supply and sanitation sector, leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as sensors, artificial intelligence, smart meters, and digital twins. These tools also offer potential benefits across the broader water cycle by supporting hydrological monitoring, remote sensing, and early warning systems to mitigate extreme weather events. Through its Digital Water program, the World Bank Group helps modernize and digitalize water utilities by assessing digital readiness, developing digital strategies and roadmaps, providing advisory services, and delivering capacity building and training in partnership with more digitally advanced utilities.

The Water in Circular Economy and Resilience (WICER) initiative promotes the integration of circular economy and resilience principles into water sector planning, investment, and service delivery. By rethinking urban water systems through a circular lens, the initiative supports countries in addressing rising water demand, growing wastewater volumes, resource scarcity, and climate-related shocks. The WICER Framework provides operational guidance to practitioners on how to apply these principles to deliver more inclusive, efficient, and climate-resilient water supply and sanitation services. The WICER team supports task teams through on-demand technical assistance, development of tools and knowledge products, and facilitation of peer learning and knowledge exchange. Technical assistance is delivered in partnership with international consultants and utility partners, complemented by applied case studies and training materials available on the WICER knowledge platform.

The Utility of the Future (UoF) Program helps water and sanitation utilities improve their performance, become more resilient, and deliver better services. It focuses on leadership, staff engagement, and practical actions that lead to long-term change. Using a clear step-by-step approach, the program supports utilities in identifying challenges, taking quick actions, and setting a strong vision for the future. The program is supported through the Utility of the Future (UoF) Center of Excellence, a partnership backed by bilateral funding which. The CoE facilitates the exchange of global best practices, promotes innovation, and strengthens the role of utilities in advancing universal access to water and sanitation.

Rural water supply and sanitation presents a growing business opportunity in support of the SDGs. Seven out of ten people without basic sanitation or drinking water live in rural areas, as well as three quarters of the poor in developing countries. As the rural fabric evolves, small towns and peri-urban areas increasingly require tailored solutions. The Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Community of Practice (RWSS CoP) brings together everyone interested in rural and small-town water, sanitation, and hygiene—including in institutions such as schools and healthcare facilities, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expanding access to WASH services in healthcare facilities and schools is critical to ensuring safe, inclusive, and resilient learning environments and the delivery of quality health care. Together with internal and external partners, we work to influence core IDA/IBRD lending for greater investments in these settings. We support clients and task teams to design, implement, and supervise these investments, contributing to sustainable outcomes and improvements in learning, health, and overall development impacts.

The World Bank, in partnership with core development partners, launched the Citywide Inclusive Sanitation (CWIS) initiative to drive a fundamental shift in addressing urban sanitation challenges in a rapidly urbanizing world. CWIS promotes equitable access to adequate sanitation; safe management of human waste across the entire sanitation chain; resource recovery and reuse; and a mix of technical solutions that support adaptive, incremental, and context-specific approaches. It emphasizes combining onsite and sewered systems—whether centralized or decentralized—to better reflect the realities of cities worldwide. CWIS also supports cities in adopting comprehensive sanitation strategies that include long-term planning, technical innovation, institutional reform, and financial mobilization. In rural areas, sustainable sanitation requires tailored approaches focused on behavior change, demand creation, hygiene promotion, supply chain strengthening, fecal sludge management in dense settings, and enabling environments that foster scale-up, coordination, and learning.

To operationalize these principles, the Water Global Practice is developing tools and guidance to support Bank teams and clients in implementing CWIS. This work includes identifying innovative service delivery models and determining where such approaches are most appropriate. CWIS is also backed by a Call to Action and close collaboration with key partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Emory University, the University of Leeds, WaterAid, and Plan International. Fecal sludge management (FSM) is now an integral part of the World Bank’s urban sanitation portfolio, with activities underway or planned in Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Angola, Benin, Mozambique, Tanzania, India, Zambia, Indonesia, and other countries. By combining global knowledge with country-level investments, the World Bank Group enhances transformational solutions that help countries achieve sustainable growth and deliver safely managed urban sanitation for all.

Implementation is being carried out through a One-Bank approach that fosters coordinated operations and joint programmatic engagements. Risk-based delegation, adaptive implementation, and alignment with corporate results frameworks—including the Corporate Scorecard—are being applied to ensure timely, effective, and measurable results. Cross-cutting priorities, including gender equality, support for Fragile, Conflict, and Violence (FCV) situations, and digital innovation, are embedded throughout.

The Singapore Water Center

The Singapore Water Center, launched through a partnership between the World Bank Group and the government of Singapore, serves as a pivotal initiative dedicated to advancing global water management practices.

Housed within the World Bank Group's Singapore office, the center aims to foster innovation, knowledge exchange and capacity development among policymakers, utility managers, and stakeholders in the water sector. By integrating advancements in policy, technology, and finance, the Center aims to address pressing water security challenges both regionally and globally. It functions as a hub offering training programs, joint studies, and pilot projects aimed at developing sustainable solutions to mitigate water stress exacerbated by climate change. This collaborative effort signifies a significant stride towards ensuring sustainable water management practices for future generations worldwide.

By FY30, the World Bank Group aims to deliver water security for 190–200 million people, with over half reached through water supply and sanitation interventions. The Water Global Practice will achieve these outcomes by accelerating the implementation of the current portfolio, expanding into new geographies, and enhancing tracking and reporting—thereby advancing countries toward universal access and long-term sustainable services for all.

By June 2025, 75.5 million people had received new or improved access to at least basic water and sanitation services through World Bank Group financed projects in that same fiscal year. More than 175 million people are expected to be reached by the WBG’s portfolio of active projects as of fiscal year 2025.

WSS has traditionally represented a significant portion of the water portfolio. Currently, it accounts for approximately 71% of the total portfolio, with net commitments totaling $30.24 billion.

Indonesia has strengthened the capacity of government institutions since 2023 to design a sanitation project set to become the country’s first World Bank-financed investment with an exclusive focus on urban sanitation. The $183.45 million Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Services Project, scheduled to be approved in 2025, would aim to provide wastewater treatment services for 2.3 million people and access to safely managed sanitation services for 1.8 million people by 2030.

In 2024, support for this proposed project included the preparation and delivery of a technical deep-dive workshop for different levels of government officials, plus city sanitation operators and local consultants, on incorporating climate resilience and greenhouse gas emission reduction into the design and operation of wastewater and septage management. The World Bank coordinated these efforts with projects by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

In Kenya, the World Bank's $330 million Water and Sanitation Development Project aims to improve water supply and sanitation services in select coastal and northeastern regions of the country and to improve the financial performance of water service providers affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, directly benefitting nearly 2 million people. The sanitation component involves building some of the country’s first publicly owned fecal waste treatment plants. Additionally, the project supports the exploration of market-based models and PPP options for non-sewered sanitation systems, with a focus on providing technical support to inform the design of sanitation activities in Malindi County.

In Bangladesh, the World Bank's $194.5 million Bangladesh Municipal Water Supply and Sanitation Project has provided improved sanitation to more than 645,000 people, including 67,221 people in 30 municipalities who have gained access to safely managed sanitation. Since 2021, support has helped build institutional capacity for service delivery, improved the financial viability of water institutions, and enhanced water institutions’ ability to leverage private finance. On the private sector front, technical assistance supported the use of contractors to help selected municipalities sustainably provide fecal sludge management services that cover the full value chain of sanitation. This assistance helped the Department of Public Health Engineering finalize the design of small-scale, simplified fecal sludge treatment systems and prepare an engagement model for the private contractors, including defining their scope of service and contract conditions. Furthermore, support in partnership with the Gates Foundation contributed to the evaluation of technical options, such as integrated waste management facilities, to improve fecal sludge treatment in selected municipalities.

The World Bank's $700 million Nigeria Sustainable Urban and Rural Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (SURWASH) Program aims to provide more than 6 million people (4 million in rural areas) with basic drinking water and 1.4 million people (more than 1 million in rural areas) with access to improved sanitation by 2030. Support has aided the design and implementation of the program’s inclusive sanitation approach for all local government areas, covering urban and rural areas as well as small towns. Support included the delivery of peer-to-peer learning events, technical advice to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation systems under the program, the review of water sector strategies, and revision of performance improvement action plans in seven states. This support has informed policies, strategies, and regulatory frameworks to strengthen the institutional environment and enhance water institutions’ capacity to improve their delivery of water and sanitation services.