At the 2025 edition of the biennial IWA Water and Development Congress and Exhibition (WDCE), the Asian Development Bank released the Asian Water Development Outlook 2025. These reports are released every 3-6 years and provide a snapshot of water security in Asia and the Pacific. This report is of great interest to Moerk Water as providing water security in the Asia-Pacific region through the provision of sustainable water treatment systems is one of our main goals.
Key Dimensions
The report states that over the last 12 years, 2.7 billion people in Asia and the Pacific have been lifted from the most extreme forms of water insecurity. All of these gains however, are at risk due to a shortfall in water infrastructure investments and environmental degradation. The report assesses water security across five key dimensions:
- Rural household water security (access to safe drinking water for rural areas)
- Economic water security (water management across industrial sectors)
- Urban water security (access to safe drinking water in urban areas)
- Environmental water security (protection of aquatic ecosystems)
- Water-related disaster security (capacity to manage water related disasters)
Moerk Water’s sustainable treatment systems secure water supplies in rural and remote areas as well as increasing climate resilience. These benefits align well with key dimension 1 and key dimension 5. Moerk Water also have a range of industrial water treatment systems which boost productivity by improving water metrics onsite. This aligns with key dimension 2.
Water Security Steps
For each region, the key dimensions are graded by progress on the national water security steps (image below). This shows how advanced each country is for each key dimension.
The Pacific region was singled out as the most water insecure region across Asia and the Pacific. The report has found that water supply has remained fairly stagnant in the region. Although some countries were found to have made gains since the last report, others have achieved net declines. Additionally, limited freshwater supplies and the general isolation of the region continue to limit progress in this region. The following two graphs show the change in water security across the five key dimensions in the last five years.
As can be seen across the two graphs, rural and urban water supply is still insecure in the Pacific region. The excellent outcome for the region however is that it has become more secure switching from engaged to capable in the key dimension area of water related disaster security. This is important as the Pacific region is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. The effects of climate change will largely be felt through water related disasters (drought, storm surges, etc).
Read more about the ADB’s Asian Water Development Outlook 2025 here.
All images on this page were taken from the Asian Water Development Outlook 2025.
