December 2017: The Global Water Partnership (GWP), together with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP), is organizing stakeholder workshops to support national reporting on the Sustainable Development Goal on clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), target 6.5. The target calls for, by 2030, the implementation of integrated water resources management (IWRM), including through transboundary cooperation.

The workshops, which have been held in 30 countries since August 2017, are meant to facilitate stakeholder discussions and the collection of data on IWRM implementation in each country, using a ‘UNEP-DHI Centre for Water and Environment’ questionnaire. They are organized under the GWP’s SDG 6 Support Programme (SDG6-SP), which is conducted together with UNEP-DHI Centre for Water and Environment and UNDP Cap-Net, a capacity building programme for water management practitioners. The next workshop will be held in Islamabad, Pakistan, on 20 December. Others have been held in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

The High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF 2018) will review implementation of SDG 6 when it meets in New York, US, in July 2018. The outcomes of the GWP workshop series, which supports national submissions of data on indicator 6.5.1, will provide part of the SDG 6 baseline data that will be included in UN-Water’s ‘SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation‘ (working title). This report will be presented to the HLPF 2018 session. UN-Water previously prepared status reports on IWRM in 2008 and 2012.

Indicator 6.5.1 monitors implementation of IWRM by assessing four components: enabling environment, institutions and participation, management instruments, and financing. The workshops provide opportunities for participants to reflect on country priorities and concerns. For example, in Slovenia, a government official expressed a need for stronger horizontal connections and cooperation among the various water-related sectors and across multiple levels of government administration. Participants at this meeting noted that IWRM principles are often confused with the recommendations of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), highlighting potential for further capacity building.

In November 2017, GWP released a background paper titled, ‘Coordinating Land and Water Governance for Food Security and Gender Equality.’ The paper draws on presentations from a June 2015 workshop in Pretoria, South Africa, which was jointly organized by the International Land Coalition (ILC), GWP, and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). The paper explores the benefits of a coordinated approach to land and water governance to promote food security and address gender inequality, and contributes to efforts to further operationalize the concept of IWRM. [GWP Press Release on Workshop Series] [UN-Water Web Page on SDG Indicator 6.5.1] [GWP Press Release on East European Workshops] [GWP Event Listing on Pakistan Workshop] [GWP Paper on ‘Coordinating Land and Water Governance for Food Security and Gender Equality’] [SDG Knowledge Hub Story on Synthesis Report]