Effective Water Governance

Suara Indonesia News - The Key to Sustainable Water Management and Poverty Eradication
Water plays a pivotal role for sustainable development, including poverty reduction. The use and abuse of and competition for increasingly precious water resources have intensified dramatically over the past decades, reaching a point where water shortages, water quality degradation and aquatic ecosystem destruction are seriously affecting prospects for economic and social development, political stability, as well as ecosystem integrity.

Given the importance of water to poverty alleviation, human and ecosystem health, the management of the water resources becomes of central importance. Currently, over 1 billion people lack access to water and over 2.4 billion lack access to basic sanitation. Access to clean water is lowest in Africa, while Asia has the largest number of people with no access to basic sanitation. This water crisis is largely our own making. It has resulted not from the natural limitations of the water supply or lack of financing and appropriate technologies, even though these are important factors, but rather from profound failures in water governance.

Consequently, resolving the challenges in this area must be a key priority if we are to achieve sustainable water resources development and management. Therefore, UNDP's response to this water crisis has been to emphasize an integrated approach to water resource management through effective water governance.

What is Water Governance?

Water Governance refers to the range of political, social, economic, and administrative systems that are in place to develop and manage water resources and the delivery of water services at different levels of society. It compromises the mechanisms, processes, and institutions through which all involved stakeholders, including citizens and interest groups, articulate their priorities, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their differences.

UNDP's Water Governance Programme is currently providing assistance to member countries on different levels through the following areas:

1) Local Management of Water Resources, Water Supply and Sanitation
2) Integrated Water Resource Management
3) Addressing Global and Regional Water Challenges
4) Water and Climate Change
5) Gender Mainstreaming
6) Capacity Development for Effective Water Governance

More national level programmes and projects are documented on UNDP country office websites.

UNDP is also one of the implementing agencies of the Global Environment Facility. UNDP-GEF administers and implements an important programme on International Waters. In addition, several UNDP-GEF Biodiversity projects involve coastal, marine and freshwater ecosystems