2016•10•28     Hamilton

Sustainable Development Goal 6 (“ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”) is among the United Nations’ 17 SDGs, part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development agreed to by world leaders last year.

Water security is fundamental to many of the SDGs, such as human and ecosystem health, biodiversity, and food production. Meeting Goal 6 would go a long way towards achieving much of the ambitious global agenda, from eradicating poverty to restoring peace and stability.

The UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), in partnership with the Korean Environment Corporation (KECO) and the Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea, is helping nations build the kind of evidence and gain the type of knowledge that can enable informed and transparent water-related government decisions and policies.

In September, champions of the Water in the World We Want project — from Ghana, Costa Rica, Pakistan, and Tunisia — came together with UNU-INWEH and KECO to share their experience in national efforts to focus policy, planning, and strategies around the SDGs. Central to the discussions were:

• strengths and weaknesses of water management in different cultures, political contexts, and climate risks
• how national governments gather and use water data to build clear evidence for better management
• how planning and decision-making can become more informed and transparent through the use of evidence-based policymaking approaches

The project’s first product is an “evidence framework” that promotes a collaborative, global network of policymakers exchanging and using evidence-based knowledge.

“National governments are compelled by the SDGs to assess where they are in terms of an informed, transparent, and accountable policy framework, and to quickly improve on this baseline to accelerate progress towards all water-related goals before 2030,” noted UNU-INWEH Director Vladimir Smakhtin.

The project aims to trial the framework for use in five countries, and then roll out the resulting tools and know-how worldwide in 2018.

For more information, see the news story on the UNU-INWEH website.