The United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 - Partnerships and cooperation for water

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The United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 - Partnerships and cooperation for water

Purpose and scope of this report

The year 2023 marks the first major United Nations (UN) conference dedicated to water since 1977. The UN 2023 Water Conference focuses on progress towards water- and sanitation-related goals, coinciding with the mid-term comprehensive review of the International Decade for Action, ‘Water for Sustainable Development 2018–2028’. At current rates, progress towards all the targets of the sixth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 6) is off-track and in some areas the rate of implementation needs to quadruple, or more (see Prologue Part 2). The SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework (GAF) was designed to accelerate this progress, and partnerships and cooperation are central to it (Box 1.1 in the PDF). Such partnerships and cooperation transcend boundaries and sectors, making SDG 6 everyone’s business.

As the UN system’s principal authoritative report on water, the United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 directly informs the UN conference discussions, describing how building partnerships and enhancing cooperation across all dimensions of sustainable development are essential to accelerating progress towards SDG 6 and realizing the human rights to water and sanitation.

The Prologue to this report briefly describes the status and trends concerning global freshwater resources (availability, demand, quality, etc.) and summarizes the current level of progress on each of the SDG 6 targets. Chapters 2–7 showcase experiences and perspectives on partnerships and cooperation from different water-dependent sectors: Agriculture, Environment, Human Settlements, Industry and Energy, Human Health, and Climate Change. Regional knowledge and practices are highlighted in Chapter 8. Chapters 9–13 review partnerships and cooperation with regards to each of the five ‘accelerators’ under the SDG 6 GAF: Education and Capacity Development, Data and Information, Innovation, Funding, and Governance. Guiding principles for successful partnerships and cooperation, along with a review of the roles, responsibilities and contributions of partners at various levels, are presented in Chapter 14.

Partnerships and cooperation, at all levels, overwhelmingly deliver positive outcomes. Cooperation improves water governance and decision-making, stimulates innovative solutions, and leverages efficiencies. By promoting inclusive engagement, participation and dialogue, and giving voices to those that are otherwise not heard (e.g. marginalized communities), partnerships can help ensure that no one is left behind and that the human rights to water and sanitation are realized.

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