Partnerships and cooperation for water and climate change

The coordination of climate and water agendas is bidirectional. On the one hand, climate policy-makers need to better understand the needs of the water community to adapt to climate change, as well as the role that water resources management and supply and sanitation can play in mitigation. On the other hand, water policy-makers need to proactively reach out to climate stakeholders to better understand how climate-led processes work, and to integrate water-related climate risks into national water policies, strategies and implementation plans.

Accelerating action through partnerships and cooperation between water and climate stakeholders can create additional benefits to freshwater ecosystems and to the most exposed and vulnerable people, reducing disaster risks, delivering cost savings, fostering job creation and generating economic opportunities.

This requires improving existing partnerships and, in some cases, forging new ones at all levels, from local, national, basin to global, through multi-stakeholder processes. Research and learning institutions, the private sector, and civil society, including youth, women and marginalized groups, play a key role and support efforts to underpin effective government leadership and action.

Climate policy needs to better reflect the role of water and water policy needs to better integrate climate risks. In commitments made by Parties to the Paris Agreement, more than 80% of countries have reported freshwater resources as an adaptation priority area. However, mitigation opportunities through water management, such as biogas recovery from wastewater treatment systems, deserve greater attention. Working together on water resource management, water and sanitation service delivery, as well as health, inclusion, food and energy, can broaden benefits from climate mitigation and adaptation efforts.

As both water and climate change know no borders, joint adaptation to climate change and cooperation across administrative boundaries (in domestic or transboundary) river basins and aquifers represent two great opportunities for cross-sector and cross-country collaboration to enable the sharing of the costs and benefits of adaptation measures, to ensure their optimal location in a river basin, and to avoid the possible negative effects of unilateral adaptation or management measures.

Only through greater cooperation between climate and water stakeholders can it be ensured that the untapped water and sanitation-related opportunities for mitigation are prioritized, that the adaptation needs of the water and sanitation sector are included into national policies, and that climate financing is directed to support the implementation of these priorities.