{"word_count": 228, "character_count": 1555}
Quality Unknown : The Invisible Water Crisis / Richard  Damania,  Sébastien Desbureaux, Aude-Sophie Rodella,  Jason Russ, Esha  Zaveri. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019 lienWater quantity—too much in the case of floods, or too little in the case  of droughts—grabs public attention and the media spotlight. Water  quality—being predominantly invisible and hard to detect—goes largely  unnoticed. Quality Unknown: The Invisible Water Crisis presents new  evidence and new data that call urgent attention to the hidden dangers  lying beneath water’s surface. It shows how poor water quality stalls  economic progress, stymies human potential, and reduces food  production. Quality Unknown examines the effects of water quality on economic growth  and finds upstream pollution lowers growth in downstream regions. It  reveals that some of the most ubiquitous contaminants in water, such as  nitrates and salt, have impacts that are larger, deeper, and wider than  has been acknowledged. And it traces the damage to crop yields and the  stark implications for food security in affected regions. An important step toward tackling the world’s water quality challenge is  recognizing its scale. The world needs reliable, accurate, and  comprehensive information so that policy makers can have new insights,  decision making can be evidence based, and citizens can call for action.  The report calls for a paradigm shift that emphasizes safer, and often  more cost-effective remedies that prevent pollution by combining smarter  policies with newer technologies. 