The WPI : assessment of application in Sava river basin

The success of a country in reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) isevaluated through the use of indicators. Indicators are used to simplify and synthesizeinformation about important issues. When an issue depends of many factors, indicatorsare often aggregated into composite indices. Although not specifically designed for theevaluation of the MDGs, the Water Poverty Index (WPI) combines physical, social,economic and environmental information associated with water scarcity while assessingthe degree to which water unavailability impacts human population (Sullivan and Meigh,2003). Besides the debate about what the term ""water poverty"" represents, there is anongoing debate about the practical application and implementation of such a WaterPoverty Index.This research had two main objectives. The first one was to examine the possibility ofcalculation of WPI for the countries that belong to Sava River Basin. The secondobjective was to investigate and discuss its implementation with decision makers in aproject of expansion of a drinking water treatment plant in Banja Luka, Bosnia andHerzegovina. The former was done through collection and compilation of data fromrelevant sources and calculation of the index. The latter was done through interviewswith decision makers in this particular case. Intensive literature review about waterpoverty, social indicators and MDGs was conducted for both objectives. The final resultsshow that the WPI is primarily poverty and water access dependant. Banja Luka casestudy demonstrated that the use of the WPI as a decision making tool would prove to bedifficult