Fostering and Leveraging Opportunities for Water Security in Kosovo

As concluded in the 2018 Kosovo Water Security Outlook report (World Bank, 2018), Kosovo is water-stressed with the lowest level of water resources developed with infrastructure. A long-term multi-sector program is required to overcome Kosovo’s multiple Water Resources challenges, characterized by limited water resources availability, lack of storage, high vulnerability to climate change impacts and water-related risks, high pollution levels, lack of reliable information for planning, underdeveloped and outdated infrastructure and inefficient service delivery, disconnected planning and limited enforcement – in light of societal and economic changes.

As a first step towards achieving Kosovo’s long-term national water strategy, the Government of Kosovo is working with the World Bank to develop a multi-sector investment project to respond to immediate challenges while developing the foundation for improved water future of Kosovo taking an integrated, systematic approach.

The proposed project aims to (i) strengthen national capacity for managing Kosovo’s water resources for water security, and (ii) in selected basin areas, improve integrated land and water resource management practices and services, in a resilient manner. The project will take a two-pronged approach to address the water security challenge. It is built around two mutually reinforcing pillars (i) strengthening institutional capacity for transforming integrated land and water resources management foundations and (ii) catalytic multi-sectoral investments in one targeted area. Catalytic investments show much desired short-term tangible impacts and provide implementation lessons that help inform the transformative measures. Likewise, the transformative program elements of preparation, prioritization, planning and innovation support the quality of implementation of the catalytic investments.