More than a Decade of Experience

In the past 10 years, UNDP has worked on water issues in 90 countries worldwide through its Water Programmes. As a Global Environment Facility (GEF) implementing agency, it is actively pioneering efforts to preserve and sustainably manage vital international water resources, including large marine ecosystems, lakes and river basins. The present UNDP International Waters portfolio includes 25 projects with a budget of $250 million. Through the GEF-funded Small Grants Programme, UNDP provided grants for over 4,000 community projects to safeguard local environments, including water resources, and to improve livelihoods. Through LIFE (Local Initiative Facility for Urban Environment) and PPPUE (Public-Private Partnerships for the Urban Environment), UNDP provides local solutions to urban environmental problems focusing on water supply and sanitation issues.

The main areas of UNDP's work on water resources, water supply and sanitation include:

Water Governance
International Waters
Community Water Initiatives
Ecosystem based Sanitation
Gender Mainstreaming
Capacity Development in Water Management

Water Governance

Dialogue on Effective Water Governance: UNDP leads this initiative together with the Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). It aims at bringing together stakeholders to examine water governance systems and, where needed, plan action strategies to improve them. The dialogue serves as a place for increasing information exchange and cooperation among stakeholders where negotiation, capacity building and collective planning and decision-making can be done in an atmosphere of confidence and trust.

National Water Governance: In close partnership with GWP, UNDP is focusing on expanding country level water management instruments. These include awareness raising, water resources assessment and information dissemination, conflict resolution, and regulatory instruments for water resources protection, technology and financing.

International Waters

The poor typically suffer the most from declining water quality and eco-system productivity since they are the most directly dependent upon these environmental assets for both their food supplies and livelihoods. Therefore, efforts to protect international waters and their biodiversity must be integrated with measures to alleviate poverty in ways that respect the regenerative thresholds of species, habitats, and waters. International Waters projects implemented by the Global Environment Facility programme within UNDP aim to help local communities realize sustainable long-term benefits by protecting waters, species, and ecosystems.

Marine and freshwater systems, including surface waters and groundwater, constitute the world's water resources, which provide drinking water, sustenance, income, transportation routes and other amenities to most of the world's people. Many of the earth's water resources are shared by two or more countries, including 261 international river basins which comprise 45 percent of the earth's total land area and 70 percent of the world's 50 large marine ecosystems, where 95 percent of the world's fish are caught.

Poorly managed and uncoordinated human activities across sectors are threatening these shared water resources internationally along with the livelihoods of billions of people who depend on them. Major threats include sea and land-based pollution, depletion of freshwater resources, habitat loss, introduction of exotic species, and over-harvesting of aquatic resources.

International cooperation on shared water resources is critical, especially in water scarce regions where the upstream and downstream impacts of consumption and pollution are magnified.

UNDP will continue building trust and cooperation within and between countries for sustainable development and management of shared waters. Important regional and national developments are currently taking place that point to shared water resources as a catalyst for cooperation, development and stability. Extensive UNDP experience with such issues has included support of regional water management institutions in South Africa, Mekong, Niger and Lake Chad, as well as the Nile, Danube, Okavango, Tumen, Black Sea and Caspian Sea.

Community Water Initiatives

Inspired by the success of its small grants programmes (LIFE, Africa 2000 and the UNDP/GEF Small Grants Program), UNDP will launch a new funding initiative for community based water supply, sanitation and watershed management to meet the water related Millennium Development Goals. The UNDP Community Water Initiative, launched on the occasion of the World Water Forum in Japan, provides grants to support innovative approaches to water supply, sanitation and watershed management at the community level. Ten to 15 countries benefit initially from the programme's pilot phase in the first year, but the Community Water Initiative is expected to include many more countries as it moves beyond the pilot phase in subsequent years.

Ecosystem based Sanitation

Provision of sanitation services to the poor requires innovative and sustainable efforts in water supply and sanitation. Ecological sanitation techniques have demonstrated that human excreta can be treated as an ecological resource rather than as waste. UNDP has initiated activities to explore linkages between ecological sanitation, urban agriculture and community management.

UNDP is currently collaborating with UNICEF, The World Bank, Sida, GTZ and a large number of international, national and local NGOs, including CARE, IWS and WaterAid, in this initiative. Pilot activities are in progress in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. A UNDP project called Ecological Sanitation, or Ecosan, has installed some 200 urine-diverting toilets in South India and 30 in Sri Lanka. Workshops and training courses have been held for local water authorities and NGOs to show how the urine diverted from polluting rivers and other bodies of water can be used safely to make sterile soil fertile.

To ensure that technologies developed are safe for human health, ecologically sound and productive for agriculture/horticulture, collaboration has also been established with research institutions in Sweden, Germany, USA, Mexico, India, South Africa and China.

Gender Mainstreaming

A gender approach in water resources management leads to greater effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, equality and development impact. It is important to empower women in the process of extending the provision of water supply and sanitation, including promoting their participation in decision making. UNDP is currently developing a Gender Resource Guide to integrate gender into UNDP water activities (national, regional and global). This work is to a large extent based on work of other institutions and carried out in close collaboration with other UN and bilateral agencies.

Capacity Development in Water Management

Capacity building is required to achieve real integration of decision-making among institutions and stakeholders. Both institutional and human capacities at national and local levels need to be strengthened. Local authorities play a major role in water management, as they are generally the primary decision-makers for land-use planning and for water management at the local level. Given that local actions in regard to water use and sanitation may have national and even regional implications, it is important that local authorities have the capacity to implement effective water management practices. Capacity building must include facilitating better communication and cooperation among stakeholders to achieve open, transparent and accountable management systems.

Strengthening human and institutional capacity to manage water resources is a priority area of UNDP and one of the prerequisites for sustainable development. The International Network for Capacity Building in IWRM (Cap-Net) has been developed to support South - South as well as North - South collaboration and exchange on capacity building in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM). Sponsored by UNDP and the Netherlands, this initiative provides technical assistance, methodologies, training materials to enhance IWRM and service delivery. It serves as a global network to support regional and national networks, training and education institutions, and targets decision-makers, professionals and future water managers. Cap-Net regional and country networks have been established in East and South Asia, Africa and South America.