Reflections from World Water Week 2024: Unlocking Water Cooperation Solutions

The session featured insightful presentations on research and knowledge from the International Centre for Water Cooperation (ICWC), each emphasizing the significance of collaborative efforts to tackle complex water challenges across various regions and contexts, and underlining the necessity for ongoing cooperation in water management:

• The Water Cooperation Global Outlook initiative, which assesses countries’ preparedness for water cooperation.
• The study on fostering enhanced water cooperation in the Shabelle-Juba basin by strengthening knowledge and data sharing at all levels of government. This work builds on a previous study supported by SwAm and ICWC on Flood Risk Management;
• The report analyzing international water cooperation and the human right to water realization in Northern West Sahara Aquifer System;
• The study on the significant contributions of Indigenous Territories to atmospheric moisture flows, underscoring the importance of recognizing indigenous knowledge in global water management efforts.

Together, these discussions and research efforts showcased ICWC’s commitment to advancing effective, inclusive and equitable water cooperation worldwide. The session also showcased an impressive panel of speakers:

• Comfort Molosiwa, Executive secretary of ORASECOM;
• Milena Angelova, Rapporteur for the European Economic and Social Committee’s opinion on Water Politics;
• Elin Adolfsson, Junior Policy Analyst at the Global Commission on the Economics of Water Secretariat; and
• Callist Tindimugaya, Commissioner for Water Resources Planning and Regulation, Ministry of Water and Environment, Uganda

They brought diverse perspectives on what makes water cooperation effective. Through their experiences and examples from various contexts, the panelists emphasized the critical role of knowledge sharing, cross-sector collaboration and community engagement in fostering successful water cooperation.

Dr. Håkan Tropp, Director of ICWC concluded that the various presentations and panelist interventions made, analysed water cooperation from several multistakeholder perspectives across real or imaginative borders, as well as highlighting different forms of water from surface water, groundwater and water in the atmosphere. In this sense, it is critical to combine a multidisciplinary perspective between the hydrological cycle along with social, economic and political dynamics to explore the full potentials of cooperation as well as identifying the challenges and the gaps.