Róger Madrigal, EfD Director of EfD Central America held two virtual presentations in May about the challenges regarding water management, with a focus on effective solutions.
In rural and peri-urban areas of Central America, nearly 23,000 water community organizations provide water to 60% of the population. Water supply is often associated with great challenges, especially during droughts.
Róger Madrigal, Director of EfD Central America, participated as a speaker in two events, to share knowledge and results from his research on water supply. One presentation was held at the XVIII Biennial International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC) Conference “Our Commons Future”, hosted by the Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. The second event was organized by the Chair on Economics of the Technological Institute of Costa Rica.
“We found that volumetric pricing is associated with substantially more successful water delivery, even when considering institutional capacity, scale of operation, socioeconomic, environmental and climatic conditions as well as country effects”, said Róger Madrigal, referring to the results obtained in a study conducted together with EfD researchers Katrina Mullan, Eduardo Pacay, Subhrendu K Pattanayak, and Juan Robalino.
Róger Madrigal added that even though volumetric pricing seems to be successful for water delivery, it is not widely adopted in the Central American countries, particularly not in Nicaragua and Guatemala.
During the second event, he also stressed that reducing water losses would be an effective way to increase the quantity of water available for the people, especially during long periods of droughts.
This second dissertation focused on Costa Rica but also highlighted water challenges present in other countries such as water shortages due to climate change, the provision of enough water to deal with the covid crises, and other global challenges.
Róger Madrigal participated in these two events as they provided a great opportunity to communicate the results of scientific studies to target groups as academics, university students, decision-makers, and other researchers.