By: Abdullah Saeed Al Habsi
The Real Test of Water Investment
When a new water project opens, it is easy to judge its importance by the volume of funding, production capacity, or expected number of beneficiaries. Yet the test that people and institutions face begins after the opening: will the service hold up when demand rises? Are the necessary funds and expertise available for maintenance? And who takes responsibility for delays when a small part in a large network breaks down? These questions do not diminish the value of the investment; rather, they determine whether it will achieve the purpose for which it was built.
Water Resilience at the Heart of Economic and Investment Planning
On October 27, 2026, the United Arab Emirates called for placing water resilience at the center of economic and investment planning during the Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (WETEX) and the World Green Economy Summit in Dubai. What is striking about this call is that it links water to energy, finance, and technology, instead of treating it as an isolated utility sector. A treatment plant needs electricity, a network needs pumps and maintenance teams, and industry and agriculture require a predictable supply rather than vague promises of increased production.
Water Use Efficiency and Its Economic Impact
This relationship matters just as much to Egypt as it does to Gulf countries, even if each country’s conditions differ. In Egypt, water is tied to agriculture, industry, and expanding cities, making the drive to use resources more efficiently an economic issue rather than merely an environmental one. If a project increases supplies but leaves leaks or distribution failures unaddressed, part of its return is lost before reaching the beneficiary. Likewise, providing modern equipment without training workers to operate and repair it can turn an advanced solution into an added burden once the warranty expires.
How Do Water Disruptions Affect Economic Activity?
Imagine an industrial zone that relied on a new water source to expand production. The construction calculations might succeed completely, only for certain workshops to shut down for hours because of a pressure glitch or a delayed pump repair. At that point, the loss does not show up in the water plant’s accounts alone; it carries over to the worker, the factory, the supplier, and the customer. This is a hypothetical picture, but it illustrates why the impact of outages on economic activity must enter into the evaluation of water projects, rather than remaining off the books.
Financing, Maintenance, Performance Indicators, and Accountability
From this perspective, I believe that any major funding should be accompanied by a clear agreement on three matters: operating and maintenance costs throughout the expected lifespan of the project, measurable performance indicators, and a publicized plan for accountability when things go wrong. A citizen does not need to know the security details of utility networks, but they deserve to know whether outage hours are dropping, whether leakage rates are falling, and how long it takes to fix a fault compared to the previous year.
Building Local Capacity and Managing Risk
There is a difference between buying a new technology and building a local capacity to use it. Relying on digital systems to monitor leaks or forecast consumption can be useful, provided that daily operations do not become dependent solely on an external company. Training, securing spare parts, documenting emergency procedures, and defining who holds the authority to intervene are no less important than the quality of the sensors themselves. In risk management, the weakest link in a system is sometimes capable of disabling the achievements of the strongest parts.
The UN Water Conference and Opportunities to Turn Pledges into Results
On the international stage, the UN Water Conference scheduled to be held in Abu Dhabi from December 8 to 10, 2026, hosted by the UAE and Senegal, presents an opportunity to raise a practical question: how do pledges and funding translate into reliable, continuous service? The requirement is not to reduce investment in new projects, but to subject them from the start to calculations of operational sustainability and institutional capacity.
How Do We Measure the True Value of Water Projects?
When a water project is announced, we have grown used to asking: how much will it produce? The complementary question that must not be left out is: how long will it remain able to produce, at what cost, and for whose benefit? Only then do we move from celebrating the scale of a project to measuring its true value in people’s lives and in the economy.
Latest video
تابع معنا تحليل قراءة الصحف اليومية مع الكاتب الصحفي Hany Sallam عبر