9 February 2010: The UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) has released the Hashimoto Action Plan II (HAP II), which aims to motivate, convene and galvanize its partners to achieve the water-related Millennium Development Goals over the next three years in five key areas: financing; sanitation; monitoring and reporting; integrated water resources management (IWRM); and water and disaster.
The HAP II focuses on two areas, namelyIWRM and water and disaster.On IWRM, the Plan aims to apply IWRM more effectively and manage the rapidly increasing need for water to adapt to climate change. The HAP II recognizes that since climate change has already begun to alter the global meteorological pattern with its effects being amplified in the water cycle, IWRM offers the best available framework for building the resilience needed to adapt to climate change.
The HAP II sets the objective to work with partners to: convene several post-Copenhagen sessions to work out paradigms on applying water management both to mitigate and adapt to climate change; and encourage and develop a “common” approach to water’s role in adaptation to climate change. Expected outcomes include: the development ofnew strategies for effective IWRM-based approaches, including financing, to build resilience for climate change; and the inclusion of water resources management in future climate change negotiations and in climate change adaptation strategies. HAP II outlines actions in this field, including the convening of actors both outside and inside the water sector in a dialogue to link water to adaptation, agriculture, national planning and economic policy.
On water and disaster, the HAP II aims to bring a new focus on starting an inclusive knowledge-sharing process linking water-related disaster toclimate change and sustainable development at various levels of governance. [The HAP II]