The World Water Forum is the largest international event on water. Every three years, it brings together decision-makers in water management: politicians, donors, academics, civil society and the private sector. This unique platform diagnoses the challenges of water management, develops proposals for action plans and submits them to the commitment of States, international organizations and civil society actors.
Co-organized by Senegal and the World Water Council, this 9th edition is of particular importance for Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) at basin level.
Indeed, its program includes a high-level political segment dedicated to basins (“basin segment”), a first in the history of the Forums. Seven years after the consecration, in 2015, of the approach of IWRM at basin level with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals and dedicated targets and indicators (6.5.1), including on transboundary cooperation (6.5.2), Dakar is a unique opportunity to take stock of the achievement of these targets. It is also an opportunity to raise the level of ambition. Finally, it is an important step to make IWRM a top political priority of the United Nations Conference on the Midterm Comprehensive Review of the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development” (New York, 22-24 March 2023) .
Basin management is already a national and regional political priority, for Senegal and for Africa. This political priority is carried by the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) and the African Network of Basin Organizations (ANBO; AMCOW’s technical advisory committee). Geography is a determining factor: almost the entire continent is covered by transboundary basins, groundwater bodies and aquifers.
This is why INBO is directly and actively mobilized for this first edition of a day dedicated to basin management, on Thursday 24 March.
More widely, INBO is a strategic partner of the Forum. In several ways, it contributed to its preparation by leading working groups, by developing thematic action plans, by drafting policy recommendations and by planning the events that will give an account of this work.
As a member of the thematic priority 3 “Cooperation” (more than 20 thematic sub-groups), INBO directly led the activities of the working groups:
- 3A “Integrated Water Resources Management-IWRM”,
- 3C “International Cooperation and Capacity Building”,
- 3E “North-South, South-South, triangular cooperation on data and information sharing and capacity building”.
It was also in charge of follow-up of the activities of working groups 3B “Transboundary Cooperation”, 3D “Multifunctional Water Infrastructure” and 3F “Multi-stakeholder Dialogue”.
INBO was also in charge of the “Water and Climate” topic and coordinated the activities of Working Group 1F “Resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change and natural disasters” and the programming of its 4 thematic sessions at the Forum.
Finally, INBO will promote at the Forum:
- the “Water Security ↔ Ecological Security” initiative, co-piloted with The Nature Conservancy & the World Water Council . The initiative calls for a strengthened dialogue between the water and nature communities and encourages public policies to better integrate the objectives of sustainable water resources management and biodiversity preservation, notably through a wider deployment of Nature-based Solutions (NBS)
- INBO – IWA methodological guide on “basin-connected cities”,
- INBO methodological guide on “Water law enforcement”.