Fresh water resources in the Changing Wealth of Nations : scoping chapter

It is important that freshwater resources are valued and managed in a sustainable way. Water as a natural asset and source of wealth has so far not been included separately in the Changing Wealth of Nations book by the World Bank. In this report, we present a roadmap to value freshwater resources on a global scale in a manner that is broadly consistent with existing international approaches used for valuation. We conduct a first exemplary rough estimate of the global asset value of water, which includes the values of water for domestic, livestock, irrigation, hydropower and navigation use, and in which we assume a sustainable use of the water resource.