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Over the past two decades Moldova has achieved major development results: poverty more than halved between 2007 and 2014, and shared prosperity for the poorest households rose sharply. Yet Moldova’s growth model is volatile, unsustainable, and is losing strength. Water underpins much of Moldova’s ability to rekindle dynamism in its economy and to provide outcomes for the health and well-being of its people and environment. Yet gaps remain in understanding the country’s water resources endowments. This diagnostic suggests that in 2018 water availability is not a binding constraint to development. Even in the presence of future changes in demand, there are limited or manageable physical constraints to water security. Going beyond a focus on the water balance, this report assesses Moldova’s water security and identifies important water-related challenges that may hinder progress in economic and human development. Moldova’s water security is threatened by poor infrastructure and suboptimal institutional performance. Through an assessment of service delivery, water resources management and risk mitigation, and an analysis of institutional arrangements and sector expenditure data, this diagnostic establishes a set of policy recommendations on how water should be sustained and leveraged to support Moldova’s development. This report provides a new, comprehensive, and balanced view of water security in Moldova, highlighting the complex water issues that Moldova must tackle to improve its water security. It seeks to elevate water security as an issue critical for national development by providing stakeholders with a stocktaking and outlook on water-related risks, and opportunities in which water can contribute to economic growth and poverty reduction.

We consider the interplay of climate change impacts, global mitigation policies, and the interests of developing countries to 2050. Focusing on Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia, we employ a structural approach to biophysical and economic modeling that incorporates climate uncertainty and allows for rigorous comparison of climate, biophysical, and economic outcomes across global mitigation regimes. We find that effective global mitigation policies generate two sources of benefit. First, less distorted climate outcomes result in typically more favourable economic outcomes. Second, successful global mitigation policies reduce global fossil fuel producer prices, relative to unconstrained emissions, providing a substantial terms of trade boost to structural fuel importers. Combined, these gains are on the order of or greater than estimates of mitigation costs. These results highlight the interests of most developing countries in effective global mitigation policies, even in the relatively near term, with the likelihood of much larger benefits post 2050.

This article considers the impact of sea level rise and storm surge on the port cities of Maputo and Beira in Mozambique. By combining a range of sea level rise scenarios for 2050 with the potential maximum storm surge level for the current 100-year storm, we analyze permanently inundated lands and temporary flood zones. In Beira, our analysis finds that a medium Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenario consistent with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections through 2050 could increase the frequency of the current 100-year storm, which is associated with a storm surge of roughly 1.9 meters, to once every 40 years. The results in Maputo show similar and even more dramatic changes in the return period of the 100-year storm (associated with more 1.1 meter surges), with a reduction to a 1-in-20-year event under the same scenario. In 2050, approximately 0.4 percent of the Beira study area's GDP is vulnerable to permanent inundation due to sea level rise, and 0.8 percent is vulnerable to periodic storm surge damage. The figures for Maputo are a bit higher -0.7 percent of the Maputo study area's GDP is vulnerable to permanent inundation due to sea level rise, and 1.1 percent is vulnerable to periodic storm surge damage.

Africa has experienced economic growth of more than 5 percent per annum during the past decade, but to sustain this growth, investment in infrastructure is fundamental. Much of these investments will support the construction of long-lived infrastructure (for example, dams, power stations, and irrigation canals), which will be vulnerable to the potentially harsher climate of the future. This book is the first to use a consistent approach across river basins and power systems in Africa, including a comprehensive, broad set of state-of-the-art climate projections to evaluate the risks posed by climate change to planned investments in Africa’s water, and power sectors. It further analyzes how investment plans can be modified to mitigate those risks, and it quantifies the corresponding benefits and costs, within the limits of a largely desk-based assessment. The scope of the study includes seven major river basins (Congo, Niger, Nile, Senegal, Upper Orange, Volta, and Zambezi) and four power pools (Central, Eastern, Southern, and West African). The study addresses the entire program for infrastructure development in Africa (PIDA) hydropower capacity enhancements in the subject basins, as part of the region’s overall power generation plans, as well as additional investments in irrigation that are included in regional and national master plans.