Foreword
At the United Nations Millennium Summit, in September 2000, world leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, including a vision for development and the eradication of poverty. That vision was taken forward and became known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Under the goal of ensuring environmental sustainability, a target was established to halve by 2015 the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. Universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) is a development imperative. Beyond WASH, however, a holistic approach to all aspects of the water cycle will contribute to the achievement of multiple development goals related to education, health, food and energy, and towards reducing inequality, boosting employment and empowering women.
The World We Want 2015 Water Thematic Consultation, facilitated under the umbrella of UN-Water, co-led by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and co-hosted by Jordan, Liberia, Mozambique, the Netherlands and Switzerland has helped define the role of water in the post-2015 development agenda. Over a period of six months, thousands of stakeholders were engaged through social media platforms and consulted at a series of high-level global meetings, all in a way that has been inclusive, transparent and deliberative. Eleven global thematic consultations organized by the United Nations and partners are laying the groundwork for a new development agenda beginning in 2015. We were supportive of water being chosen as one of the 11 themes, and we were encouraged by the sheer volume of responses to the thematic consultation. We were equally heartened by the diversity of contributors who engaged in the process week after week. The individual voices made important contributions and collectively spoke with authoritative wisdom.
This report is a result of sifting through and distilling the hundreds of stakeholder contributions made in response to dozens of practical questions raised during the consultation. The questions were organized around the interdependencies regarding access to drinking water, sanitation and hygiene. They are linked to a wider water development agenda that embraces water resources and wastewater management, and water quality improvements. Significant gains have been made. The objective on water provision was met five years before the deadline. But progress on sanitation has been slower. Participants in the consultations concluded that vital work remains to be done in order to finish the business that began with the MDGs. They felt that the focus on narrow goals has not encouraged collaborative approaches to reducing poverty. Emerging from the consultations were recommendations for a new development framework that calls for reducing inequalities around water through rights-based approaches to service provision and governance. These approaches should go beyond water, sanitation and hygiene. They should integrate the management of water resources and wastewater, and improvements in water quality, requiring all sectors to break out of their narrow siloes. In this way, a strong water sector will be able to support outcomes in other thematic areas related to poverty reduction and inequalities.
Bert Diphoorn
Vice-Chair, UN-Water
Yoka Brandt
Deputy Executive Director, UNICEF
Thomas Stelzer
Assistant Secretary-General, UN DESA