United Nations and World Bank announce call for action at World Economic Forum.
Published on: 09/02/2016
The Sustainable Development Goal for water and sanitation (SDG 6) is getting the backing of two heads of state, while eight more are invited to join in. At a special session of the World Economic Forum in January 2016, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim announced the launch of a High Level Panel on Water [1, 2, 3].
The presidents of Mexico and Mauritius, Enrique Peña Nieto and Ameenah Gurib-Fakim will chair the new panel. Together with an intended 8 more heads of state from developed and developing country, they will develop an agenda to achieve SDG 6 [1].
The main aims of the panel are to align actions of policy makers, the private sector and civil society, and to advocate for financing.
The water community might have done a very good job of analysing the problem and coming up with solutions, but it has never broken through politically at the highest level, at scale, in developed and developing countries. Dominic Waughray
The water sector lacks “coordinated political momentum” remarked the World Economic Forum’s head of public-private partnerships Dominic Waughray [1].
Many countries are experiencing “water stress and water-related disasters that will grow worse due to climate change without better policy decisions”, a World Bank release stated [3]. Despite efforts by UN-Water, the World Bank and the #ClimateIsWater campaign, water was not mentioned in the much acclaimed Paris Agreement at the UN Conference on Climate Change in December 2015 [4].
Dominic Waughray reminds us that climate change is not the sole cause for water scarcity. Over-abstraction is another [1]. Disastrous agricultural policies implemented by the Syrian government in the middle of a long drought are seen as one of the triggers of the current conflict [5]. Elsewhere in the Middle East, the control of water has become a strategic military target [6]. The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks 2016 report placed water crises in the top three global risks of highest impact in the next 10 years [2].
Former Prime Minister of Australia and chair of Sanitation and Water for All Kevin Rudd, believes the time is now right to bring water to the top level of political discourse [1]. There are certainly enough technical initiatives and organisations outside the UN system eager to help, including the 2030 Water Resources Group, OECD, Stockholm International Water Institute, World Economic Forum, World Water Council, World Resources Institute and the Global Water Partnership [2, 3].
Global monitoring
The UN system itself is focussing on making credible data available that will support sector advocacy and political commitment. For this purpose, UN-Water is developing a coherent framework for the global monitoring of SDG 6 that will align three existing tracking systems: the WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMP), UN-Water Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water (GLAAS) and the relatively new Integrated Monitoring initiative GEMI [7].
The promise of high-level political committment for SDG 6 is good news and indeed timely. We have no time to waste. As IRC's CEO Patrick Moriarty has said:"if we don't manage to nail that change in the next five years, there's very little chance that we'll achieve the [SDG 6] goals by 2030" [8].
[1] Karl Mathiesen, Ban Ki-moon gathers heads of state for political response to water scarcity, Guardian, 21 Jan 2016
[2] Fon Mathuros, United Nations, World Bank Group Launch High-Level Panel on Water in Davos, WEF, 21 Jan 2016
[3] Christopher M. Walsh, United Nations, World Bank Group Launch High Level Panel on Water, World Bank, 21 Jan 2016
[4] 7 basic questions on Climate Change and WASH, IRC, 15 Jan 2016
[5] John Vidal, Water supply key to outcome of conflicts in Iraq and Syria, experts warn, Guardian, 2 Jul 2014
[6] Assad regime’s drought response triggered Syrian war, ENS, 28 Feb 2014
[7] UN-Water, 2016. Monitoring water and sanitation in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development : introductory guide. Geneva, Switzerland: UN-Water. Available at: http://www.unwater.org/publications/publications-detail/en/c/379864/
[8] Patrick Moriarty.15 years to make history, 5 years to make change, IRC, 24 Sep 2015
