Water governance

SIWI – Leading expert in water governance
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Why Water
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Water governance

Groundwater

Groundwater is the regulator of the entire freshwater cycle, but its invisibility makes it difficult to manage and protect.

Good water governance is key to achieving water security, fairly allocating water resources, and avoiding disputes.

Water cooperation

Water is a growing concern in many parts of the world. Countries can improve their water resilience through transboundary water cooperation over shared waters.

Water and climate

The climate crisis is essentially a water crisis. When we treat it as such, we get new tools to mitigate climate change and adapt to consequences that are unavoidable.

In 2015, the global community launched the 2030 Agenda, with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that should be reached by 2030. Some progress has been made, but for most of the goals, the world is not on track to meet the deadline. Water can help us do better.

Water scarcity

Insufficient supply and inadequate infrastructure leaves millions of people in the world without water.

Agriculture and water

How to increase the productivity of agriculture around the world through better water management.

The impact of COVID-19

The global COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of people back into poverty and exposed unacceptable gaps between the rich and the poor. One in three people are still not able to wash their hands with soap and water at home.

Water and conflicts

Will future wars be fought over water? The answer is probably no, but water scarcity can contribute to conflicts.

Indigenous knowledge

Indigenous peoples are the custodians of many of the world’s most fragile and important ecosystems. They also possess invaluable knowledge about sustainability and resilience, so they have a vital role in protecting our environment.

Source-to-Sea

The source-to-sea approach focuses on the strong connection between what happens on land, along waterways, and in the sea.

Water in landscapes

A growing number of people, societies and companies are discovering the power of resilient landscapes. It is still possible to shift to more sustainable practices that recharge water, restore soil health, sequester carbon, and strengthen biodiversity – but we need to make the transformation now.

Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

More than two billion people in the world lack safely managed drinking water and twice as many lack safely managed sanitation, making WASH one of the most urgent development challenges.

Rivers

While we all depend heavily on rivers for our survival, many rivers are under constant threat from unsustainable human activities

PERSPECTIVES

Youth and water

More and more young people offer important contributions to solving the growing water challenges they are inheriting.

Human rights and water

Having access to water and sanitation has been recognized as a human right since 2010. But water is also essential to ensuring the fulfilment of many other rights.

Gender and water

To improve water governance, we need to take a close look at gender roles.

Many of the most pressing challenges in the world are about water: too little, too much or too inferior. Such challenges can only be effectively addressed through adequate governance of available water resources.

Water governance refers to the political, social, economic, and administrative systems that influence the use and management of water. It is essentially about who gets what water, when and how, and who has the right to water, its related services and their benefits.

Good water governance is essential to achieve water security, fairly allocate water resources, and avoid disputes. It has social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions, all of which must be carefully considered and addressed.

How societies choose to govern their water resources and services has a profound impact on people’s livelihoods and the sustainability of water resources. Ultimately, access to water is a matter of survival and can, in many cases, help to break the circle of poverty. Improving water governance is therefore essential to alleviating global poverty.

Sound governance of water resources is also vital for the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals. Inadequate access to drinking water and sanitation is a significant threat to public health, making it a major obstacle to sustainable social and economic development.

Water governance faces many challenges

Poor resource management, corruption, inappropriate institutional arrangements, bureaucratic inertia, insufficient human capacity, and lack of investment funds all undermine the effective governance of water.

Moreover, the allocation of water is often determined by factors and actors outside of what is traditionally defined as the water sector. Agriculture, trade, energy, and environmental and industrialization policies all affect water allocation, but none of these are generally within the control of the water sector. This makes good water governance particularly challenging.

The answer to such challenges is to establish clear roles and responsibilities for governments, civil society, and the private sector in relation to water resources. Each actor has an important part to play and water governance is about creating the foundation for them to do just that.