Transcript Slide 1
G77 Ministerial Forum on Water
23-25 February 2009, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman
UNDP’s experience with
South-South Cooperation in
Transboundary Waters
Management and
Knowledge Sharing on Water
Andrew Hudson
Cluster Leader & Principal Technical Advisor, Int’l Waters
Water Governance Programme
United Nations Development Programme
UNDP Water Governance Programme
– Strategic Priorities
• IWRM - Reduce poverty and vulnerability, sustain and enhance
livelihoods and protect environmental resources by helping countries
to achieve equitable allocation and efficient water resources
management through adaptive water governance
• Water Supply & Sanitation - Reduce poverty and vulnerability,
sustain and enhance livelihoods, and protect environmental resources
by helping countries to achieve or exceed the water supply and
sanitation MDGs through adaptive water governance
• Regional & Global Cooperation - Enhance regional and global
cooperation, peace, security and socio-economic development
through adaptive governance of shared water resources
Shared Waters are the norm,
not the exception
• Globally, there are 263 watersheds that cross the political
boundaries of two or more countries, representing about one half of
the earth’s land surface and forty percent of global population;
• 145 countries have territory within one or more of these
international basins;
• There are an estimated 300 transboundary aquifer systems in the
world;
• Two-thirds of the world’s 64 “Large Marine Ecosystems” (LME),
where 85% of the world’s annual wild fish harvest are caught, are
shared by two or more countries
UNDP-GEF International Waters Portfolio
– Freshwater Basins
• CEEurope/C. Asia – 9 waterbodies
• Danube, Dnipro, Kura-Aras, Tisza River basins
• Lakes Baikal, Peipsi, Prespa
• Caspian Sea
• Dinaric Karst aquifer
•Asia-Pacific – 1 waterbody
• Seistan River basin
•Africa – 8 waterbodies
• Nile, Niger, Senegal, Orange, Okavango river basins
• Lakes Tanganyika, Chad, Manzala
•Latin America – 3 waterbodies
• Rio de la Plata, Artibonito River
• Lake Titicaca
•Arab States – 2 waterbodies
• Nile River, Nubian Aquifer
• Small Island Developing States – 33 SIDS
• Pacific SIDS
• Caribbean SIDS
• SE Atlantic & Indian Ocean SIDS
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies – UN Water
• Legal Instruments
• 1997 UN Convention on Non-navigable uses of Int’l Watercourses
core principles (equitable use, no harm) already part of int’l
customary law
• 2002 UN ECE Convention on TB Watercourses & Lakes has served
as basis for new agreements (e.g. Danube)
• ECE Convention amended (not yet in force) to make open for
accession by all-UN member states
• MEAs (CBD, UNCCD, etc.) provide further frameworks for regional
cooperation
• ILC Draft Articles law of transboundary aquifers – May 2008
• Challenges remain: 158 of world’s 263 TB river basins lack any
regional cooperation framework
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies – UN Water
• Legal Instruments
•Elements of ‘good’ transboundary legal instruments include:
• Clearly set out institutional arrangements
• Clear enforcement and dispute resolution mechanisms
• Incorporate both water quality & quantity, climate change, societal
values
• Identify clear means to share benefits of water, not just the water
itself
• Provisions for joint monitoring, info exchange, public participation
• Mechanisms that promote water-related joint economic development
• Common weaknesses:
• Weak capacity to implement and enforce
• Inadequate integration of environment
• Limited sectoral scope
• Non-inclusion of important riparians
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies
• Institutional Structures & Capacity Development
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Clear mandates for both regional and national bodies
Strong cross-sectoral coordination at national level
Strong political will & financing commitment
Involvement of appropriate range of stakeholders
Appropriate RBO rules of procedure and terms of reference
Staff – broad competencies and multi-disciplinary skills
• Negotiation, diplomacy, conflict resolution skills
• Joint bodies need to provide:
• Coordination & Advisory functions
• Policy development and implementation
• Dispute settlement, monitoring & reporting
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies
•Information Exchange/Joint Monitoring & Assessment
• Accurate assessment info essential for informed decision-making
& policy formulation
• Need for comparable info between countries
• Harmonized, compatible assessment methods & data mgmt
systems; agreed terminologies
• Information exchange essential – accidents, infrastructure,
extreme events, hydropower & navigation operations, etc.
• Integrated Approaches
• IWRM principles as applied to TB river basin; many multi-country
agreements are highly sectoral
• Land/water/ecosystem management that maximizes social
welfare without compromising ecosystems
• Multi-faceted, flexible decision-making processes
• Adaptive management
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies – UN Water
•Participatory Approaches to Regional Management
• Help to maximize agreement
• Enhance transparency & decision-making
• Facilitate acceptance & enforcement of
decisions/policies of shared waters institutions
• Mechanism for gaining common ground between
stakeholders
• Requires financial resources to be effective
• Organize openly & transparently
• Involve all relevant groups (stakeholder analysis)
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies – UN Water
•Benefits and Cost-Sharing
• Focus on use of water to generate benefits, not on
allocation of water
• Optimize generation of basin-wide benefits
• Work to share the benefits equitably
• Even under benefit sharing approaches, will often be
difficult trade-offs and choices
• Payments for benefits/compensation for costs can be
integral element of cooperative arrangements
• Payments for ecosystem services – new, innovative
Lessons Learned in facilitating effective
multi-country governance of shared
waterbodies – UN Water
• Financing
• Short and long-term financing essential for legal
frameworks, new institutions, capacity building, AND
investments
• As always, diversify: national, local, donors, etc.
• Innovative financial mechanisms
• Regional revolving funds
• Payments for ecosystem services
• (equitable) cost recovery for water services
• Require strong political support, good governance and
effective institutions
Lessons Learned in promoting South-South
knowledge exchange on Integrated Water
Resources Management –
UNDP’s CapNet Programme
• Capacity building is most effective when it is delivered from local
knowledge centres by local professionals;
• Long term support to capacity development can only come from
knowledgeable local resource centres (donors come and go);
• Bringing in regional experts is often more appreciated than
international experts and can allow for more continuous collaboration
over time;
• S-S sharing of experience is most responsive to the real needs of
the developing world and more likely to lead to action;
Lessons Learned in promoting South-South
knowledge exchange on Integrated Water
Resources Management –
UNDP CapNet Programme
• South-South Collaboration is often donor driven; by identifying
local capacity needs, the Cap-Net network partners have been able
to set the capacity building agenda and undertake activities that
build capacity to improve water resources management and multiply
the number of resource persons, creating independent national and
regional capacity;
• Greater regional collaboration in terms of research projects, postgraduate education, case study exchanges, joint facilitation of
training courses and learning exchange visits has narrowed the gap
in water resources management by providing a series of platforms
for stakeholder dialogue and first-hand exchange of knowledge and
experience.
Lessons Learned in promoting South-South
knowledge exchange on
Transboundary Waters Management
– International Waters: LEARN
• The Biennial GEF International Waters conferences have become a pivotal
South-South portfolio learning event
• Identification of many common problems and challenges
• Can learn as much from others’ failures as successes
• Southern participants have the most to contribute (vs. North)
• Participants self-organize along technical, governance, ecosystem or
geographical lines
• Variety of learning styles employed (formal, informal, face-face,
virtual, etc.)
• Regional dialogue processes can help foster trust and confidence and
trigger transboundary cooperation
• 'Athens/Petersberg' process helped to validate the concerns of
stakeholders in the SEEurope region as a collective;
• Provision of sustained support enabled the opening of a
consultative knowledge-sharing and participative peer learning space;
• Participants must genuinely own the process, because if one side feels
manipulated by the other they will withdraw;
• Can be catalytic, leading to spin-off activities
Lessons Learned in promoting South-South
knowledge exchange on
Transboundary Waters Management
– International Waters: LEARN
• Inter-project peer learning exchanges have proven to be possibly the most
powerful mechanism for south-to-south knowledge transfer
• Participants on each side engage in reflecting on how and why various
tools and approaches have or have not worked and why their lessons
might be worth sharing
• When projects define their own learning objectives, the learning
exchange process itself generally proves to be mutually valuable
• Collaborations - create opportunities (and incentives) to learn together,
including creative joint problem-solving and peer assisting activities like clinics
• Meals and libations - unscheduled "down-time" seals the bonds of eternal
camaraderie, thus should not be abbreviated or overrun by keynotes which
prevent peer-to-peer interactions
• S-S exchange occurs most effortlessly when professionals working towards
common ends in parallel conditions grow personal connections and confidence
in each other which encourage them to call on one another for assistance and
goodwill to preemptively offer or respond to the same
Thank you!
Andrew Hudson
UNDP Water Governance Program
FF-998
1 UN Plaza
New York, NY 10017
Tel 1 212 906 6228
Fax 1 212 906 6998
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.undp.org/water