How a water trucking governance mechanism in the West Bank enhances equity and sustainability
Giovanni Cesari | Sarah Oz Johnson | Giorgio Cancelliere | Gregor von Medeazza
In the Oslo Accord-defined Area C of the West Bank, approximately 11,000 Palestinians are unserved by the water network, forced to rely on water trucking at extremely high prices. In response to this situation, Gruppo di Volontariato Civile (GVC), in partnership with UNICEF, created a programme to subsidize water trucking that alleviates water scarcity while enhancing the sustainability of water service delivery, equitability of tariffs, and predictability of demand. Established in 2014, the programme now covers all the water-vulnerable communities in the West Bank and has reached 35,000 people. The programme links humanitarian and development interventions by using a contiguum approach, where the humanitarian provision of trucked water is accompanied by the construction of water infrastructure and the creation of a multilevel water trucking governance system that defines the roles and responsibilities of all national, regional, and local actors in the water supply chain. By embedding water trucking into the Palestinian Water Authority’s normal activities, the programme is designed to escape a cycle of chronic emergency humanitarian response, in line with the national water sector reform agenda. Eventually, the international donor funding on which the programme depends should be phased out by implementing an equitable, universal water tariff schedule across the entire West Bank, with rates set high enough to subsidize the provision of reliable, safe, and affordable water to the vulnerable residents of Area C.Gruppo di Volontariato Civile (GVC) (2017a) How Can Development and Humanitarian Actors Apply a LRRD Approach to the Area C Context, Jerusalem: GVC.
GVC (2017b) Case Study: The Gender-Differentiated Impact of WASH Programming Using the Project ‘Emergency Supply of Water Trucking to Area C of the West Bank’, Jerusalem: GVC.
GVC, Action Against Hunger (AAH), and Palestinian Water Authority (PWA) (2017) Water Master Plan for the South and North-east of the West Bank, Specifically Area C (2017–2035), Ramallah: GVC, AAH, PWA.
Messerschmid, C. (2013) Water in Palestine, The Birzeit Strategic Studies Forum, The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies, Birzeit University, Palestine.
Ministry of Planning and Administrative Development (2014) National Strategic Framework for Development Policies and Interventions in Area C (2014–2016), State of Palestine, Support of Stability and Development in Marginalized Areas of the Occupied West Bank.
Muenchenbach, M. (2013) Transitional Water Scarcity Response Proposal, draft proposal: The Transitional Water Scarcity Response Project for Un-served and Under-served Communities at High Risk in the West Bank of the oPt, consultancy undertaken for UNICEF, Jerusalem.
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) HNO (2017) 2018 Humanitarian Needs Overview, Jerusalem: OCHA.
OCHA HRP (2016) 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan, Jerusalem: OCHA.
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OCHA Map (2017) West Bank Access Restrictions, West Bank Map, OCHA.
Oslo Accords II (1995) Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Taba, Egypt: Government of the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
PWA (2013) National Water and Wastewater Policy and Strategy for Palestine, Toward Building a Palestinian State from Water Perspective, Ramallah: PWA.
Selby, J. (2013) ‘Cooperation, domination and colonisation: the Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Committee’, Water Alternatives 6(1): 1–24.
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), GVC, and PWA (2016) ‘Water crisis threatens 35,000 Palestinians, half of them children’, press release, UNICEF.
von Medeazza, G. (2008) ‘An ecological economic look at freshwater scarcities: evidence from Morocco, Spain, the Occupied Palestinian Territories and South India’, in I.A. Urboniené (ed.), Desalination: Methods, Costs and Technology, pp. 263–324, New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Adaptive strategies to enhance water security and resilience in low- and middle-income countries: A critical review
Lebu, Sarah
Lee, Allison
Salzberg, Aaron
Bauza, Valerie
Science of The Total Environment, Vol. 925 (2024), Iss. P.171520
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.171520 [Citations: 6]
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