Council participates in high-level side event at the UN Summit to welcome the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals

During the high-level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York last week, the 193 United Nations members states adopted the new set of Sustainable Development Goals in its draft resolution on ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.’ This decision will shape the way humanity will overcome development challenges and extreme poverty in the next 15 years and beyond. 

 

Among the ambitions 17 goals which aim to tackle poverty, climate change and inequality for all people in all countries, a dedicated goal for water has been recognized. But, in fact, water is a pre-requisite to the achievement of the entire post-2015 development agenda because it is an underlying pre-condition for the achievement of all the SDGs: for food, for health, for women’s empowerment, for energy production, for economic prosperity, for the environment, for industry, for peace. In the face of future global challenges, the World Water Council strongly believes that water is much more the solution than the problem. Rather than focus on the problems of water, we must now secure in the long run water resources for global prosperity.

World Water Council President Braga was invited to contribute to the High-level side event on the margins of the UN Summit on ‘Catalyzing Implementation and Achievement of the Water-related SDGs’, where various government representatives from Thailand, Tajikistan, and Hungary, as well recognized members of the water community such as GWP, SIWI or UN-WATER were present. 

 

President Braga underlined that water needs to emerge as the greatest political priority across all sectors and entities. He said that creating a water-secure world can only happen if we work together, recognizing that sustainable management of water resources is a shared responsibility among all stakeholders The collective action accomplished by the international water community through the World Water Forum processes is one contribution towards the achievement of that  broader development agenda. He furthermore emphasized that there is a need to recalibrate the way things are done and build coherence between international frameworks.