Development of a Global National Water Management Index

Abstract

With the pressures caused by economic development, population growth and changing consumption patterns, various water challenges will be more intensive in the future with regional differentiation. In 2019, the National Blueprint Framework (NBF) was proposed as a water management framework to show the progress and challenges in water-related SDGs at national level. The 2019 version of the NBF has been developed for the EU28. In developing countries, the water challenges tend to be even more intensive because of the higher population growth, urbanization and challenges regarding the governance capacity. Therefore, developing the National Blueprint Framework to a globally applicable framework will provide a way for developing countries to enhance their water management. With this aim, the following research question was addressed: What updates can be proposed to optimize the indicator framework to be applicable in developing countries, with complementary water-related indicators that can be used or linked to SDG6? The main knowledge gaps are taking into consideration with the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus and the lack of water-related data in developing countries as the main challenges. The new NBF was developed by a system analysis of the WEF nexus and quantitative reviews of various datasets. This newly developed NBF provides a data-driven overview of the current state of implementation of SDG 6 and other associated SDGs around the world. Using 24 indicators across 7 categories, the NBF contributes to assessing water-related challenges for more than 145 countries. The NBF provides a gauge for countries to assess how far to SDG targets. All NBF indicators are scored on a 0-10 scale from worst to the best performance for a broad audience to allow for a comparison among regions as well as countries.