Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

2 2 8 / C H A L L E N G E S T O L I F E A N D W E L L - B E I N GPromoting Cleaner Industry for Everyone’s Benefitenvisaged and the water industry systems are unsustainable, beingbased on the exploitation of one by the other. In many countriesthis lack of sustainability is becoming increasingly evident. Projectedgrowth in demand for water cannot be met from existing finiteresources by supply-side considerations alone.It follows that integrating improved supply-side considerationswith enhanced demand-side management must be invoked both atgovernment and enterprise levels to restore the balance betweeneconomic and environmental objectives.Figure 9.1: Competing water uses for main income groups of countriesAgricultural Industrial Domesticuse (%) use (%) use (%)World 70 22 8Low income 87 8 5Middle income 74 13 12Lower middle income 75 15 10Upper middle income 73 10 17Low & middle income 82 10 8East Asia & Pacific 80 14 6Europe & central Asia 63 26 11Latin America & Caribbean 74 9 18Middle East & North Africa 89 4 6South Asia 93 2 4Sub-Saharan Africa 87 4 9High income 30 59 11Europe Economic andMonetary Union (EMU) 21 63 16Demand-side initiatives can play an important role in:■ increasing the efficiency of those industrial processes that placethe greatest demands on water supply through the adoption ofbest available techniques; and■ lowering the pollutant loads of water discharged by industrythrough the recognition that much of this pollutant loadrepresents excess raw materials that should not be discarded byan enterprise but rather captured for reuse.These initiatives offer opportunities to break the prevailing paradigmwhereby industrial growth and environmental protection are seen asincompatible alternatives. In existing industry, these demand-sideinitiatives can be driven, at least in part, by economic considerationsat enterprise level. Thus, industry may be attracted to take up suchwork for reasons of enhanced competitiveness rather than forreasons of compliance with the negative drivers of regulation andenforcement. For new industrial investment, ensuring theincorporation of resource-efficient technologies and best-operatingpractices should be a key element of industrial planning by nationalinvestment promotion agencies.Domestic use8%Domestic use11%Industrialuse10%Domestic use8%Industrialuse22%Agriculturaluse70%Industrialuse59%Agriculturaluse30%Agriculturaluse82%WorldHigh-income countriesLow- and middleincomecountriesIndustrial use of water increases with country income, going from 10 percent for low- and middle-income countries to 59 percent for high-income countries.Source: World Bank, 2001.