Water governance

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Water governance

Water and Peace

When properly managed, water can be a peacemaking platform for long lasting cooperation

Water cooperation

Water is a growing concern in many parts of the world. Countries can improve their water resilience through transboundary water cooperation over shared waters.

Indigenous peoples are the custodians of many of the world’s most fragile and important ecosystems. They also possess invaluable knowledge about sustainability and resilience, so they have a vital role in protecting our environment.

Water and the 2030 Agenda

In 2015, the global community launched the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that should be reached by 2030. Some progress has been made, but for most of the goals, the world is not on track to meet the deadline. Water can help us do better.

Water in landscapes

A growing number of people, societies and companies are discovering the power of resilient landscapes. It is still possible to shift to more sustainable practices that recharge water, restore soil health, sequester carbon, and strengthen biodiversity – but we need to make the transformation now.

Agriculture and water

How to increase the productivity of agriculture around the world through better water management.

Groundwater

Groundwater is the regulator of the entire freshwater cycle, but its invisibility makes it difficult to manage and protect.

Rivers

While we all depend heavily on rivers for our survival, many rivers are under constant threat from unsustainable human activities

Water scarcity

Insufficient supply and inadequate infrastructure leaves millions of people in the world without water.

Source-to-Sea

The source-to-sea approach focuses on the strong connection between what happens on land, along waterways, and in the sea.

Water and climate

The climate crisis is essentially a water crisis. When we treat it as such, we get new tools to mitigate climate change and adapt to consequences that are unavoidable.

Many of the most pressing challenges in the world are about water: too little, too much or too inferior. Such challenges can only be effectively addressed through adequate governance of available water resources.

The impact of COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of people back into poverty and exposed unacceptable gaps between the rich and the poor. One in three people are still not able to wash their hands with soap and water at home.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

More than two billion people in the world lack safely managed drinking water and twice as many lack safely managed sanitation, making WASH one of the most urgent development challenges.

PERSPECTIVES

Youth and water

More and more young people offer important contributions to solving the growing water challenges they are inheriting.

Human rights and water

Having access to water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right since 2010. But water is also essential to ensuring the fulfilment of many other rights.

Gender and water

To improve water governance, we need to take a close look at gender roles.

Many of the most pressing challenges in the world are closely connected to water. To address them we need to find the right tools to share and protect water resources. This is what water governance is all about.

Water governance refers to the political, social, economic, and administrative systems that influence the use and management of water. It is essentially about who gets what water, when and how, and who has the right to water, its related services and their benefits.

A challenging endeavor

Water is the most precious resource on the planet, but its availability is increasingly uncertain. A wide range of actors use large amounts of water resources, and consumption across sectors is very uneven. Ultimately, not all actors can have all of the water that they want.

Many political processes affect water allocation, such as agriculture, trade, energy, and environmental and industrialization policies. These factors make effective water governance difficult. Other challenges for water governance include poor resource management, corruption, inappropriate institutional arrangements, bureaucratic inertia, insufficient human capacity, and lack of investment funds. The answer to such challenges is to establish clear roles and responsibilities for governments, civil society, and the private sector in relation to water resources. Each actor has an important part to play and water governance is about creating the foundation for them to do just that.

This requires the engagement of a range of institutions and actors. Effective water governance is inclusive, data driven, and based on correct and relevant information. It enables stakeholders to find ways to balance the trade-offs between different sectors and actors, overcome hurdles, work out agreements, and ultimately set up sustainable processes for the regulation and use of water.

Water is the dealmaker for a sustainable future

Having functioning water governance frameworks gives fundamental security and allows for stronger and more efficient investments in the water infrastructure by reducing risks for investors. Decisions, rules, and regulations around water are vital to enable universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation, fairly allocate water, and avoid disputes around it.

Yet, how we govern our shared water resources has profound effects even far beyond Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on clean water and sanitation. In fact, it greatly matters for all 17 SDGs.

All life connects through water and depends on the availability of water. Water governance is therefore a vital foundational step that allows us to reach multiple goals such as being able to respond to the climate crisis, ensure food security, fight poverty, protect biodiversity, address pollution, and solve conflict. All these goals depend on and connect to the governance of water resources. Ultimately, good water governance is the foundation and prerequisite for a more sustainable and equal world.