Energy and Environment

What's New

Human Development Report 2006
Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis

Cape Town, 9 November — A Global Action Plan under G8 leadership is urgently needed to resolve a water and sanitation crisis that causes nearly two million child deaths every year. This year’s Human Development Report has been launched in Cape Town, South Africa on November 9, 2006. Please click here to go to the website that contains the Report and all related material.

For information on what UNDP does in water and sanitation please see our fact sheet "Action on Water".

UNDP-Publicis Water Alert Campaign
New York, 10 November
To advance the messages of UNDP’s 2006 Human Development Report, “Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis”, the United Nations Development Programme and Publicis Italy are launching the Water Alert Campaign.

This international advertising drive aspires to garner support for universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. Newspapers and magazines in the developed world are invited to join the water challenge by publishing free of charge the campaign’s four print ads, designed pro bono by the Milan-based agency of Publicis.

To download these ads and for more information, please visit the Water Alert website at www.undp.org/wateralert.

UNDP at World Water Week 2006
Building Capacity, Promoting Partnership, Reviewing Implementation
Stockholm, 24 August - The World Water Week in Stockholm, an annual global meeting place for capacity-building, partnership-building and follow-up on the implementation of international processes and programmes in water and development, is now underway. On the first day UNDP convened a seminar entitled 'What’s Water Worth?', with WHO and other organisations, making the economic case for investing in water to encourage poverty reduction and economic growth; water should be viewed as a solution, not a hurdle, for national development. Speakers included Professor John Soussan, Stockholm Environmental Institute, UK, and UNDP’s Joakim Harlin who presented a recent paper, “Linking Poverty Reduction and Water Resource Management”, produced by the Poverty-Environment Partnership (PEP), a collection of recommendations for economically advantageous water projects. Seminar attendees were invited to participate in a discussion designed to generate a strategy to engage governments in facilitating implementation of economic approaches to water projects at the country level, based on the findings of the PEP paper. The findings of the paper have been endorsed by more than 19 government and international agencies. Later in the week UNDP is presenting a joint seminar with the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) on ‘Promoting IWRM Beyond Borders: Transboundary Waters and Human Development’ featuring UNDP colleagues from the Human Development Report Office, Kevin Watkins, HDRO Director, who will present an overview of the HDR 2006: Beyond scarcity: power, poverty and the global water crisis, and Arunaba Ghosh, who will present on projecting IWRM beyond borders. You can follow the week’s events with daily updates on the official website.

4th World Water Forum
Mexico City, 22 March - The World Water Forum, a tri-annual major international event on water, an initiative of the World Water Council and hosted by the Government of Mexico, was convened from 16-22 March in Mexico City with over 20,000 participants. The Forum’s main objectives are to raise political awareness on critical water issues, stakeholder networking and promoting discussion and knowledge exchange. For a comprehensive summary report on all sessions and events, ranging from sanitation to IWRM to financing issues and much more, please see the Earth Negotiations Bulletin Summary report and the various 4th WWF outcome documents on thematic and regional sessions, political declarations, keynote speeches and side events, available online.

UNDP’s participation at the 4th WWF focused on awareness-raising through the launch of several reports and publications; capacity-building through day-long training sessions in IWRM and several other activities.

One major highlight was the launch of a policy report examining water and poverty linkages, as part of the Poverty and Environment Partnership (PEP). A newly updated version of UNDP’s Resource Guide on Gender Mainstreaming into Water Management was presented in cooperation with the Gender & Water Alliance.

CAP-NET also led a number of capacity-building and training sessions, including a full day ‘Mega-Session’ on implementation of IWRM in national plans, featuring case studies and UNDP experiences across regions, e.g. IWRM in Kazakhstan; training courses on gender and water, water law, conflict resolution, and e-learning with various partners at the learning centre.

A new partnership between UNDP and Columbia University will lead to a joint production of a Lessons Learnt & How-to-Handbook based on Water Supply and Sanitation, based on case studies that were presented during the WWF Water Supply and Sanitation Theme Day (to be published in August 2006). Other joint events included sessions with UNICEF, UN Habitat and WHO on water supply and sanitation, MDGs and Gender issues, and side events and theme sessions on risk management and transboundary waters.

NEW Water Governance Facility
Stockholm, 1 February 2006 - The United Nations Development Programme and the Swedish Agency for International Development Cooperation (SIDA) have launched a new initiative, hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute, to support developing country efforts to strengthen water governance read more.