“Building partnerships and enhancing cooperation across all dimensions of sustainable development are essential to accelerating progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal for water and sanitation (SDG 6) and realizing the human rights to water and sanitation.”
The United Nations World Water Development Report 2023: Partnerships and cooperation for water was launched at the UN 2023 Water Conference that took place in New York on 22-24 March. The report focuses on partnerships and cooperation that arise in nearly any water-related work. The report highlights “how enhancing positive and meaningful cooperation amongst the water, sanitation and broader ‘development’ communities is required to accelerate progress.” In order to maximize benefits, the report urges the water and sanitation sector to collaborate more effectively internally and to partner with other sectors where water plays an important role.
GWOPA/UN-Habitat contributed to Chapter 4 of the report by introducing the concept of Water Operators’ Partnerships (WOPs), giving some statistics on documented WOPs and their regional distribution, explaining how this model is particularly relevant for water and sanitation services in rural areas, and further discussing the positive outcomes generated by WOPs. The chapter also showcases two examples of South-South partnerships, one focusing on pro-poor services in Africa and the other targeting water services for indigenous communities in Latin America.
Overall, the United Nations World Water Development Report 2023 reiterates GWOPA’s vision: "Water and sanitation service providers, connected in a solidarity-based network, are sharing and helping one another improve services for all to achieve local and global objectives.” We invite you to have a glance at the entire report and, in particular, to read section 4.2, which centers on WOPs.