UN System Wide Strategy on Water and Sanitation Launched

Following the various commitments made at the 2023 UN Water Conference, stakeholders gathered at the UN High-Level Political Forum in New York on July 16, 2024 at the special “SDG 6 and Water Agenda” event to launch the first-ever UN System Wide Strategy (SWS) on water and sanitation. The strategy is intended to provide a comprehensive approach for United Nations entities with a mandate which includes themes related to water and sanitation to work collaboratively – not as a sector in a ‘silo’, but holistically to address the interrelated cross-sectoral aspects of water and sanitation.

This follows the adoption in September 2023 of General Assembly Resolution 77/334 77/334. which requested the Secretary-General to present such a strategy in consultation with Member States before the end of the seventy-eighth session. The SWS has been developed by UN-Water, the United Nations’ inter-agency coordination mechanism for water and sanitation, under the leadership of the UN-Water Chair, as requested by the Secretary-General.

Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, declared on this occasion that “It is the UN system that unites in favor of safe drinking water and sanitation for all. Our new unified approach will strengthen collaboration across the sectors, countries and communities we support, drive progress towards sustainable development and transform lives.” She added that “this work is urgent. Progress has been limited on global water and sanitation commitments, including Sustainable Development Goal 6”. She recalled that by 2022, 2.2 billion people would not have access to safely managed drinking water and 3.5 billion would not have access to safely managed sanitation services, while water consumption is increasing by almost 1% every year.

Beyond the need to accelerate progress in the implementation of SDG 6, the document mentions the gradual increase in water and sanitation challenges, amongst others as a result of climate change, the unprecedented levels of groundwater use, aquifer degradation, and the loss of wetlands. To deal with these issues, the strategy argues that collective, cross-sectoral leadership will be needed to provide integrated, innovative solutions that leverage synergies and manage trade-offs across sectors. Amongst others as a response to  recognition of the slow pace of progress on SDG 6, UN-Water had earlier developed the SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework as a unifying initiative to deliver results more rapidly and at an increased scale.

According to the speakers, the UN system-wide water and sanitation strategy is the result of extensive collaboration between UN-Water's 36 members, the Development Coordination Office, country teams and other UN entities, and aims to improve the coordination and implementation of water priorities worldwide. It “unifies the UN system's approach to water and sanitation, promoting joint programming and inter-agency collaboration across sectors and geographies”.

The SWS is structured around five points of entry. The first of these is leading and inspiring collective action on water and sanitation: recognising that leadership and political will are key factors in accelerating progress, it is recognized that there is no single entity within the UN system that is dedicated exclusively to water and sanitation issues. To correct for this, water and sanitation will be lifted to the status of central priority across the work of the UN. Leadership on this is vested in The chair of U.N, Water as well as the envisaged United Nations Special Envoy for Water. In addition, major emphasis will be placed on communication efforts and the United Nations system will increase its capacity to provide global, up-to-date information and latest evidence on the status of the world’s water resources and progress on water and sanitation goals and targets.

Th second point of entry is leveraging unified support as a UN system at country level and by mobilizing stakeholders and partnerships for water and sanitation. There is substantial expertise across the UN system on water and sanitation issues and through strengthened engagement at the country level, the available multidisciplinary expertise can be placed at the disposal of countries. In this process, UN-Water will connect requests for support to the diverse water and sanitation expertise, technical assistance, and initiatives of UN-Water Members and Partners and the international community. In pursuit of this aim, the UN will ensure that partnerships at global, regional, national, and river basin, lake and aquifer levels to mobilize public and private entities as well as civil society input to help accelerate progress towards the 2030 Agenda.

The third point of entry is the aim to ensure integration of water and sanitation issues across sectors and their mainstreaming into intergovernmental processes. Water and sanitation are highly interlinked with all dimensions of sustainable development, but decisions taken in other sectors (for example, agriculture, energy, health, environment and finance) often do not consider the associated impacts on water availability and water quality. In addition, policy and institutional fragmentation between different levels of governance can hinder progress. To solve this, the UN system itself needs to work together more collaboratively and effectively across mandated areas. The complementarities between different financial strategies, policies and approaches need to be enhanced, integrated policy frameworks across sectors (for instance the water food energy nexus) need to be encouraged, and water and sanitation issues need to be mainstreamed across intergovernmental processes.

The fourth point of entry is that the support of the UN system needs to be focused on the already agreed acceleration mechanisms for SDG 6: financing, data and information, capacity development, innovation and governance. This implies that financing strategies, frameworks and plans for investment in water and sanitation are prepared and implemented with UN support. It means that high quality, disaggregated water and sanitation data and information are made available through strengthened national and subnational monitoring systems. It also means that institutional and human resources capacity development is provided by the UN system, and that support is provided for an environment in which the uptake of innovation is enabled.

The fifth and last point of entry in the system wide strategy is to introduce mechanisms for joint review and learning. Joint United Nations system reviews and learning events are envisaged at both technical and leadership levels. Also, progress on water and sanitation goals and targets can be reviewed through joint learning and exchange among all actors.

These five points of entry are the main strategic areas through which UN entities which are united in sharing a water and sanitation related mandate will operationalize inter-agency coordination. The SWS aims to leverage system reforms and upscale water and sanitation action to provide more strategic, effective, coherent, and efficient support to Member States.