Foreword
At the United Nations Millennium Summit, in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, including a vision for development and the eradication of poverty. That vision was taken forward and became known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under the goal of ensuring environmental sustainability, a target was established to halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is a development imperative. Beyond WASH, however, a holistic approach to all aspects of the water cycle will contribute to the achievement of multiple development goals related to education, health, food and energy, and towards reducing inequality, boosting employment and empowering women.
The World We Want 2015 Water Thematic Consultation, facilitated under the umbrella of UN-Water, co-led by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and co-hosted by Jordan, Liberia, Mozambique, the Netherlands and Switzerland has helped define the role of water in the post-2015 development agenda. Over a period of six months, thousands of stakeholders were engaged through social media platforms and consulted at a series of high-level global meetings, all in a way that has been inclusive, transparent and deliberative. Eleven global thematic consultations organized by the United Nations and partners are laying the groundwork for a new development agenda beginning in 2015. We were supportive of water being chosen as one of the 11 themes, and we were encouraged by the sheer volume of responses to the thematic consultation. We were equally heartened by the diversity of contributors who engaged in the process week after week. The individual voices made important contributions and collectively spoke with authoritative wisdom.
This report is a result of sifting through and distilling the hundreds of stakeholder contributions made in response to dozens of practical questions raised during the consultation. The questions were organized around the interdependencies regarding access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. They are linked to a wider water development agenda that embraces water resources and wastewater management, and water quality improvements. Significant gains have been made. The objective on water provision was met five years before the deadline. But progress on sanitation has been slower. Participants in the consultations concluded that vital work remains to be done in order to finish the business that began with the MDGs. They felt that the focus on narrow goals has not encouraged collaborative approaches to reducing poverty. Emerging from the consultations were recommendations for a new development framework that calls for reducing inequalities around water through rights-based approaches to service provision and governance. These approaches should go beyond water, sanitation and hygiene. They should integrate the management of water resources and wastewater, and improvements in water quality, requiring all sectors to break out of their narrow siloes. In this way, a strong water sector will be able to support outcomes in other thematic areas related to poverty reduction and inequalities.
Bert Diphoorn
Vice-Chair, UN-Water
Yoka Brandt
Deputy ExecutiveDirector, UNICEF
Thomas Stelzer
Assistant Secretary-General, UN DESA
Executive Summary
Background: In November 2012 the UN system set out to forge a more robust and inclusive framework for development. That framework would be designed to meet needs articulated by 100 nations, and built from the priorities of 11 thematic consultations: education; environmental sustainability; conflict and fragility; energy; food security and nutrition; governance; growth & employment; health; inequalities; population; and fresh water. Over three stages, this report captures the essence of the process, outcomes, linkages and recommendations for water.
Global Outreach: First, the Water Thematic Consultation expanded outward through live events, social media and an interactive website to engage and amplify thousands of diverse voices. New perspectives from people in 185 Member States responded to weekly topics of widespread concern. High-level meetings absorbed views of government, business and civil society from The Hague to Monrovia, Liberia; Geneva, Switzerland; Tunis, Tunisia; Mumbai, India; and back. Face-to-face dialogues were bolstered and informed through web- based forums, interactive page views, comments, poll responses, live video feeds, e-discussions, surveys, reports and much more. Combined, the consultation proved to be an expansive international outreach process.
Inclusive synthesis: Next, the Consultation contracted inward to distil and organize thousands of responses and debates into this document. Over the course of five months of active participation of stakeholders, it emerged that linkages exist between several of the consultation themes; but water underpins each and every one.
Three Linked Elements: To articulate the complex nature of neglected issues, and show how a new framework could complete the unfinished business of development, the water thematic consultation went beyond a narrow approach of demanding toilets and taps for billions of still un- or under-served poor. Instead it addressed water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH); water resources management; and wastewater/water quality management as three vital and interdependent dimensions that, taken together, can secure universal access to water, for all, forever.
1. The primacy of ensuring WASH access was explicitly and strongly voiced. Despite enhancing water sources for 2 billion people since 1990, 783 million still lack access, 1.8 billion drink ‘improved’ but unsafe water, 2.5 billion lack improved sanitation and 1.1 billion defecate in the open. The absence of WASH spreads preventable disease and death to millions. It jeopardizes trust in governance, whether local or national. It costs 1.5% to 4.3% from GDP, stunts childhood growth, drains women’s time and energy, empties school chairs, forces needless risks, and denies human dignity. But the converse is also true. Investing $1 in WASH yields at least $4.30 in revenue, a conservative estimate that rises as one includes tourism, natural asset protection, and productivity from combining WASH with classrooms and health facilities.
2. Largely ignored in the MDGs, the crosscutting nature of water resource management was explored in depth. Water’s horizontal linkages reveal competition between energy, agriculture, industry, and nature.
Rising affluence, temperatures, populations, and pollution further intensify water stress. Yet potential routes to collaboration also emerged. Appropriate resource valuation could reduce energy’s hunger for 8-44% of all water withdrawals, and water’s thirst for up to 33% of all energy. A more efficient food supply chain could greatly enhance global nutrition supply without demanding more water. Such efforts to reduce waste can improve access for vulnerable populations, boost climate resilience and ease tensions in shared watersheds. But at root the water crisis was seen as a governance crisis. Resolution combines soft reforms – transparency, accountability, participatory decision-making – with hard investments in both civil works and ‘natural infrastructure’ that stores, conveys, cools and filters water.
3. Pollution of our rivers place billions of thirsty, hungry urban families that live downstream in danger. The dialogue on wastewater management and water quality confirmed that dilution of pollution was no longer a solution. Parties discussed how prevention, reduction, or removal of pollution to be both possible and profitable. They reconsidered the use, reuse, value and even meaning of “waste” water. As more than half of humanity lives in cities, contaminated discharge and surface runoff spread water-borne disease among billions. While real solutions yield high returns, the urban poor who need them most generate almost no taxes or influence; meanwhile politicians rarely invest if direct costs are immediate and indirect benefits appear only after they leave office or help those at a distance. Downstream, the impacted billions who depend on food from marine ecosystems could look upstream to slow, stop, or reverse nitrogen and phosphorous loads in the 90% untreated urban wastewater. Rewards could go beyond resilience to boost growth, jobs, and business certainty. But scale matters. Reuse options must relate to local circumstances, cultural norms, safety of use, awareness, and capacity.
Rights-Based Approach: The MDGs generated global momentum and national progress around water and sanitation goals as a moral imperative. This thematic consultation emphasized the broad economic benefits from judicious water use. Yet it was argued that incentives alone can’t prevent unequal access for today’s population, let alone for future generations. Indeed, to endure and reach everyone – especially the weakest, most remote, impoverished or unborn members in society – on an equal basis, parties felt reluctant to force water access unilaterally from above. Nor can rights take shape without due respect for local cultural, gender, political or natural context. Rather, it became clear through the consultation that secure access to water must be recognized as a fundamental right for all, which can’t be taken away.
Ensuring Equity: In 2010 the UN General Assembly explicitly recognized the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation. The discussions re-emphasised the need for the right to empower women and children with equity, allow the poorest and most vulnerable to negotiate from below, and help ensure that local point-of-use decisions are integrated across all three sub-sectors both ‘upstream’ to water resources as well as ‘downstream’ to wastewater treatment. The consultation listened to and amplified the voices of the next generation represented in the Youth Parliament, as well as the Beyond 2015 campaign of 260 civil society organisations from 60 countries.
A Post-2015 Agenda for Water: The final stage synthesized cross-cutting lessons learnt from the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and recommends a clear path forward that is measurable, inter-generational, pragmatic, and rests on the smart and equitable use of water. The MDGs proved to be a vital instrument that focused attention, momentum and accountability toward new funding, policies, knowledge, capacity, and shared strategies that could expand access to clean water and sanitation. But in hindsight the water consultation also revealed some shortfalls of the MDGs: missing linkages, lack of rights, absence of integration, and the deepening inequalities over water among countries, societies, or families.
The water thematic consultation reached a peak in March 2013 at a high level meeting in The Hague, which set a new course for concerted action and global direction, capturing water’s importance to the post-2015 development framework in these key points:
␣␣ Water is a key determinant in all aspects of social, economic and environmental development and must therefore be a central focus of any post-2015 framework for poverty eradication and global sustainable development.
␣␣ Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, Water Resources Management and Wastewater Management and Water Quality are all indispensable elements for building a water-secure world.
␣␣ Water security will be of growing importance. Water should be addressed adequately in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, in order to prevent crises in the water as well as in the water- dependent sectors.
␣␣ Governments play a key role in securing water for competing demands; however the quest for a water-secure world is a joint responsibility and can only be achieved through water cooperation at local, national, regional and global level and through partnerships with a multitude of stakeholders ranging from the citizens to policy makers to the private sector.
␣␣ Water-related capacity development, both at the individual and institutional levels, will be fundamental in the realization and implementation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
␣␣ Innovative, inclusive and sustainable financing mechanisms for water need to be implemented.
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