Elegantes Telefax - JAV der TUB - TU Berlin

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mental and social safeguards. This elevation of management responsibility will be
accompanied by the establishment of water resource management units and a Human
Resources Strategy for water resources.
The general perspective of the WRSS was supported by an external Commission
on the Financing of Water Infrastructure, established by the Global Water Partnership
and the World Water Council at the 3rd World Water Forum in 2001 in Kyoto, chaired
by Michel Camdessus which delivered a report “Financing Water for All” in 2003 in
view of the Millennium Development Goals (WWC, GWP 2003). It focuses on the
financing problems and potential solutions to water service delivery, but makes a
supporting reference to the WRSS of the World Bank in its section on major hydraulic
works (WWC and GWP 2003, 26).
The observation of the reduction infrastructure investment lending, especially in
IBRD countries, by 50 percent between 1993 and 2002, led to a request for a policy
change in a Board meeting in early 2003. This was supported by the report of the
Camdessus panel, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the
World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (WSSD). The Infrastructure
Structure Action Plan is, thus, a concerted action of the Bank’s management
to fill (at least partially) the financing gap between the MDGs and the decline of
private investment and World Bank lending in water supply and sanitation, among
other infrastructure sectors (World Bank 2003d).
X. ASSESSMENT OF THE CHANGES IN WORLD BANK
WATER RESOURCES POLICY
The 2004 WRSS constitutes continuity and considerable change at the same time:
The continuity applies to the adherence to the principles and for the implementation
of the IWRM concept, but it implies a “realistic” pragmatic approach to the implementation
in the borrowing countries giving the heavy political opposition it faces as it often
means the redistribution of power in the water sector. The WRSS focuses on
identifying the opportunities for reform, tailoring the proposals to the country specific
circumstances and providing the Bank with a better organizational structure and
more, better human resources to implement the concept. This has been relatively
uncontentious in the Bank and among its owners, the other donors and the various
stakeholders.
The change has occurred in the renewed inclusion of dams or hydraulic infrastructure
in the lending activities of the Bank. The reduction in dam lending has been the