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About Stockholm International Water Institute
SIWI is a not-for-profit water institute with broad expertise in water governance – from sanitation and water resources management to water diplomacy. Our research and policy advice support decision-makers worldwide.
SIWI organizes World Water Week, the world’s leading annual water event, and awards the prestigious Stockholm Water Prize and Stockholm Junior Water Prize. Furthermore, SIWI hosts several flagship programmes, including the UNDP-SIWI Water Governance Facility, the International Centre for Water Cooperation (ICWC), the Shared Waters Partnership, and the Action Platform for Source-to-Sea Management (S2S Platform). SIWI is also home to Swedish Water House, which bridges science, policy, and practice.
With this submission to the ECOSOC, SIWI wishes to highlight the multi-faceted contributions of water to the goals under review at the 2022 HLPF, with supporting examples from our own work. This shows the potential of water in catalysing efficient action to achieve the 2030 Agenda.
Our message: Water is a crucial enabler for sustainable development
Water plays an important cross-cutting role for the fulfilment of the entire 2030 Agenda. Healthy freshwater ecosystems and oceans are fundamental for a biosphere in balance, which is especially important for vulnerable populations, who also need accessible, equitable, and resilient water and sanitation infrastructures. The experiences of the past two years, with the Covid –19 pandemic and ever-increasing impacts of climate change, have further demonstrated the crucial role of water for the needs of all societies, economies, and ecosystems.
Our policy recommendations:
To advance the fulfilment of the goals under review this year, as well as the 2030 Agenda overall, SIWI proposes the following:
➢ Improve access to and governance of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH).
- Water, sanitation, and hygiene are essential tools to limit the spread of Covid-19. Improving access to WASH, especially for poor and marginalized groups and communities, can help limit the risks of infections and strengthen people’s resilience against future pandemics. Stable, equitable, and affordable WASH services could also lift people out of poverty. It often means that more girls can go to school instead of fetching water, contributing to the goals of access to quality education for all (SDG4) and gender equality (SDG5).
➢ Use natural resources, including water, more sustainably.
- Covid-19 highlights that our current relationship with nature and natural resources is not a sustainable one. In the recovery efforts from COVID-19 and building back, focus must be on establishing a new pact with nature that ensures the sustainable use of natural resources, including water resources, that meet the needs of people as well as those of the planet. By protecting nature and water resources, we protect people and our planet (SDGs 14 and 15).
➢ Achieve sustainable development through an integrated and holistic approach across economic, environmental, and social dimensions.
- We need an integrated and holistic approach to sustainable development, across the economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Only if we move away from our current siloed approaches, working in isolated sectors, can we achieve the SDGs, as well as other global agendas such as the Paris Climate Agreement. Especially given the growing pressure on water, caused both by climate change and rising demand, can we see a new need for improved governance and intensified cooperation among stakeholders, sectors, and countries. Cross-sectoral and inclusive multi-stakeholder approaches need to become the new norm for sustainable development and offer inspiring contributions to the SDG 17 Partnerships for the Goals.
Source-to-Sea management is a particularly promising example of cross-sectoral water governance. It offers a solution to fragmented governance and the urgent need to consider the linkages between land, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems linkages. The recovery from Covid-19 offers an opportunity to rethink our societies, including governance, finance, and consumption. Now is the time for decision-makers around the world to drive meaningful change through policy reforms, sustainable financing, and collaborative management that restore and maintain the health of the ocean and reverse the trends of biodiversity loss. Catalytic examples will incorporate nature-based solutions and support innovative blue-green options, over yesterday’s fossil fuel-dependent ones. (SDGs 14, 15 and 17)
