Water Security of Cities and Their Regions

Urban water governance and management is a complex policy area and quantification through indices can help obtaining insights into this complex matter. Particularly the quantification of urban water security goals could help carry out comparisons, assessments, prioritise actions and investments, track progress and inform decisions. This paper builds on Van Ginkel et al. (2018) who developed an urban water security dashboard. The urban water security dashboard characterises the water security of cities by taking a systems perspective based on the pressure-state-impact-response framework. Van Ginkel et al. (2018) applied the water security dashboard to 10 cities that differ in terms of economic development level and climate. This paper adds two cities: Nur-Sultan and Almaty. Continental cities in a relatively arid climate are not part of the original set of 10, which also did not include any Central Asian cities. The discussion in this paper will focus on the situation in Nur-Sultan and Almaty and further adds to Van Ginkel et al. (2018) a discussion on the relation between water security of cities and water security of the regions they are located in.