Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (IDWA): International and Intra-national Exploration

2. Drinking Water Adequacy Differentials in Asia

14 Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (IDWA) 14 Drinking Water Adequacy Differentials in Asia1 Seetharam Kallidaikurichi E. and Bhanoji Rao An Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (referred to as IDWA-I in this paper) was first proposed in 2007 for 23 member countries of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and formed part of the Asian Water and Development Outlook (AWDO), 2007 brought out by the ADB. IDWA-I was obtained by averaging 5 separate component indicators referring to capacity to buy water, extent of resource availability, amount of water used, water quality (indicated by a proxy variable, namely the death rate due to diarrhea) and the per cent of people with access. This paper reports the main results of IDWA-I and IDWA-II, in which we replace general 2 1 An earlier (lengthier) version of this paper is available as a Discussion Paper along with the Asian Water and Development Outlook (AWDO) 2007, issued by the Asian Development Bank. The authors acknowledge the encouragement and constructive comments received from the intellectual leader of AWDO, Professor Asit Biswas, President and Academician, Third World Center for Water Management, and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. The usual disclaimers apply. The authors also acknowledge the kind comments of an anonymous referee, which have significantly added value to the paper. Drinking Water Adequacy Differentials in Asia 15 access with specific access via home connection, after finding out the relatively weak correlation between the two types of access. Because of the dominating influence of the other common components, IDWA-I and IDWA-II are highly correlated indicators . The two, however, bring out diverse relative ranks of different countries. 1. Introduction As Paul Streeten (1994, p. 295) has put it succinctly: “… indices are useful in focusing attention…. They have considerable political appeal…. They are eye-catching.” This paper reports on the concept, method and results on an indicator of drinking water adequacy, and provides the indicator values and implications for 23 Asian economies at the turn of this century. Presently the most widely used indicators relating to drinking water refer to the extent of access denoted by the proportion (percentage) of total population with access to safe drinking water. Thus, even the well publicized and relatively recent Millennium Development Goal on water and sanitation (MDG-7)2 hopes to “halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation”. If the access percentages referred to earlier are too simplistic, there is one other that is most complex, an index known as the Water Poverty Index that is based on 27 separate indicators. The concept and methodology of WPI has been amply explained in 2 The 8 MDGs, endorsed by 191 nations in all, are Eradicate Poverty & Hunger; Achieve Universal Primary Education; Promote Gender Equality; Reduce Child Mortality; Improve Maternal Health; Combat HIV AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases; Ensure Environmental Sustainability; and Develop a Global Partnership for Development. The sub-goals of Goal 7 are: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; Reverse loss of environmental resources; Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water; and Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020. 16 Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (IDWA) Lawrence, Meigh and Sullivan (2002).3 It has been pointed out that the idea behind WPI is to combine measures of water availability and access with measures of people’s capacity to access water on a sustained basis, the use of water and environmental factors, with an impact on water quality and ecology. The idea behind WPI is good and laudable, but the data requirement (27 indicators) is mind-boggling. Accepting the basic idea of the utility of a composite index with key parameters going into it, and limiting ourselves to the most appropriate indicators, the Index of Drinking Water Adequacy (referred to as IDWA-I from now on) was proposed originally for use in the maiden issue of the Asian Water Development Outlook, 2007 (A.K. Biswas and K.E. Seetharam, 2008). The objectives of this paper are essentially twofold: to place IDWA-I before a wider audience and to report results on IDWA-II. The paper is organized as follows. The making of IDWA-I is explained in the next section and inter...