Managing water commons using mediator variables to bridge the gap between environmental factors and anthropogenic pollution indicators

Overview and summary Economic instruments, such as water tariffs or pollution charges, are an important complement to technical, regulatory, and institutional tools to achieve a sustainable and efficient management of wastewater. Economic instruments use market-based, mostly monetary, measures with the objective to raise revenue to help finance wastewater services, to provide incentives to use water efficiently and carefully, to provide disincentives for the anti-social release of polluted wastewater, to make the polluter pay for the environmental damage done, and to raise awareness on the environmental and societal costs of water use and wastewater discharge. The most common economic instruments used in wastewater management are the pricing of wastewater services and levying of charges for wastewater discharge into the environment. In this lesson, different economic instruments used in wastewater management will be presented. Special emphasis will be given to the various tariff structures that are used to levy wastewater service fees. Tariffs determine the level of revenues that service providers receive from users. They are designed for different purposes, and often contain some elements to address poverty.

Abstract The power of advanced analytics is substantial. Massive scales of big, structured and unstructured data relieve unthinkable patterns and help us redefine economic models, solve operational inefficiencies and optimize costs. The water utilities could substantially benefit from the data available from new digital assets and smart technologies. Many are facing damaged and failing infrastructure and lack of financial resources for makeovers. However, Industry 4.0 and Digitalization open new fronts and bring new assets such as real-time monitoring of critical systems via IoT and sensors, advanced metering and predictive analytics to improve customer billing, remote data collection systems at pumping stations and water storage facilities and many more. The power of “digital twin”, as a virtual replica of a physical asset, and ways of enriching the traditional data sources with open source data increase considerably the available intelligence for more sophisticated correlation, linkages and insights. This study reviews the core values of big data, advanced analytics, smart technologies and its application in water resources management and it gives concrete recommendation how to accelerate the adoption of use of Big Data by leveraging on technology and innovation.

INTRODUCTION In the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR), improperly treated domestic wastewater can be a significant source of marine pollution and represents a threat to human health, sustainable development and marine resources. However, a tendency to the stagnation in the sanitation services is observed among many municipalities in the region as population's size and the economy are increased. Also, natural resources vital to economic growth are wasted or lost through misdirected urban policies and practices, and population overspill into areas less suitable for urban development, thus creating further pressure on these resources as urban sprawl increases, turning the town concerned into one large drain 1 . The environmental problems associated with uncontrolled urban development are particularly marked among the poorest urban sectors those with the worst housing and the most restricted access to public services. But the principal impact of unrestrained urban expansion is on the environment caused by pollution of inland and marine waters, exhaustion of water reserves, destruction of woodlands and fertile agricultural land, and encroachment on ecologically-productive territory (the ecological footprint). The severest effects are declining drinking water reserves and deteriorating housing quality, public health and sanitation services 2 . In WCR countries, an important sector of the population lives in coastal areas where sewerage systems are deficient and even absent in some cases and have illegal connections to the storm drains. The limited access to a basic sanitation by means of the domiciliary connection to a sewer system, low[1]cost household systems made up of septic tanks, dry latrine and with discharge of water, and to the simple pit latrine; as well as the shortage of sewage treatment plants in countries that have sewer systems causing risks to public health and the environment 3 . The pattern of sanitation cover in the region is extremely patchy in terms of its extent and treatment capabilities, reflecting sharp differences between the various countries in terms of culture and tradition, as well as degrees of socio-economic development; factors that significantly influence the lives of their populations and the environmental quality. The development of these services in the region over the last three decades compares quite favorably with other parts of the world. However, as regards to coverage, the absolute numbers are worrying, an estimated 100 million inhabitants (15% of those living in upstream coastal areas) have no access to sanitation services, while some 43% of the sewer system effluents receives some degree of treatment(pre-treatment, primary treatment, secondary treatment, tertiary treatment or sewage discharges by means of submarine outfalls) 4 .