Measuring our impact, SIWI World Water Week conference 2020

Sufficient and safe water is often unavailable due to contamination and a dwindling supply. The shift towards the use of groundwater that occurs in many countries leads to an increase in groundwater extraction and depletion of water levels, affecting the sustainability of water supply in many regions. Recognizing the impact of access to sufficient and safe water supplies on the health, wellbeing, and livelihoods of individuals across the world, the global community has implemented thousands of projects to support the sustainable accessibility of sufficient and safe water supplies. However, it is challenging to determine the real impacts of these interventions on their intended beneficiaries.

In this panel discussion at the 2020 SIWI World Water Week, we discussed the implementation and evaluation of projects meant to attain and maintain adequate water supplies in resource-restricted settings with a focus on challenges related to the evaluation of these projects.  The discussion will involve questions related the integrating evaluability into the project designs, the effect of unexpected events and weather-related disasters on outcomes and the lessons learned in one setting and adopting them into policy-relevant recommendations, based on a recent 3ie-funded study which looked at. In the context of COVID, the discussions also touched upon using administrative data and Big Data in the evaluations due to the difficulty in collecting in-person data, and the opportunities for doing so in the future.  The importance of cost effectiveness analysis was also discussed along with the challenges with getting those types of data.