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| Author: |
Poverty-Environment Partnership, 2006-03-17
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| Title: |
Linking Poverty Reduction and Water Management |
| Publisher: |
UNDP and the Stockholm Environment Institute, prepared on behalf of the Poverty-Environment Partnership, 82 pages
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| Type: |
Papers
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| Country / Region: |
Global
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| Categories: |
Environmental Management,
Water & Sanitation,
PRSPs
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| Themes/Issues: |
Development
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| Date Posted: |
2006-03-07 |
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*********** This paper was launched at a joint agency session at the 4th World Water Forum (WWF) in Mexico City on Friday 17 March, 4:30-6:30 pm ***********
The global community is united in its commitment to remove the scourge of world poverty through actions that bring different interests and organisations together in effective partnerships around the Millennium Development Goals agenda.The Poverty-Environment Partnership is a product of these concerns, reflecting a determination of different international organisations that support development to work together to address the links between poverty reduction and the various aspects of environmental management. This Joint Agency paper, a product of deliberations among many donor agencies, focuses on one of the most important issues in this agenda: the contribution of water management to poverty reduction. The issue of ensuring that the poor have access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation has, rightly, been prominent in international discussions, and specific targets have been included in the internationally agreed MDGs. But the contribution of water management to poverty reduction goes far beyond just drinking water and sanitation: water is essential for improving the health and livelihoods of the poor, ensuring wider environmental sustainability, reducing urban squalor and eradicating hunger. It is also critical in addressing gender inequalities and improving access to education for the poor.
This paper analyses these links and outlines the different ways in which improvements to water management can advance the cause of poverty reduction. Indeed, improving access to water is in some cases an essential pre-condition to the attainment of other MDG targets: there is little prospect of many health, environmental or income targets being achieved unless action is taken to address water problems.The paper also gives a clear and optimistic message for the future. It illustrates that improving the contribution of water management to poverty reduction is not just achievable: it is affordable. In many cases, it is a good investment that generates growth and gives rates of return comparable with investments in any other sector. And these benefits are directly targeted to the poor, and especially to women who bear many of the burdens that a lack of investments in water creates. Investing in water, in reforms to the institutions that govern water management and creating more effective partnerships to focus international support to water and environmental sustainability are all essential. The agencies that have worked together to prepare this paper are all committed to supporting these changes. The paper demonstrates that affordable and sustainable actions are possible, and in many places are already happening. The international community faces a critical challenge in building on and supporting these actions so that the existing role that water management plays in poverty reduction can be enhanced in the future.
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