Shared Waters Partnership

The Shared Waters Partnership (SWP) promotes cooperative approaches to shared water, which can advance peace, security, environmental protection and open new opportunities for riparian states to sustainably develop their water resources. It does so by working to strengthen multi-stakeholder platforms, improve efforts to align diplomatic and development work and build capacity to create robust, responsive institutions in cooperative shared water management.

Expert panel on water security
SWP Project Manager Anders Jägerskog took part on 25 September in an expert panel on water security in connection with the UN General Assembly. The Panel was intended to provide input to a coming UN Water Policy Brief on Water Security. In a related high level event water security was also discussed and among others US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighted the useful approach of the Shared Waters Partnership in addressing shared water problems.

Building trust, preventing conflict
The SWP works to prevent conflict over shared waters by building trust and promoting cooperation.. The key objective of the partnership is to establish a multi-stakeholder platform to increase political will and strengthen riparian country commitment to regional processes that advance cooperation in regions where water is, or may become, a source of conflict. Among others it will foster cooperation in ‘riskier’ environments where other organizations are less likely and not willing to operate and enhancing opportunities to learn, codify and exchange lessons in using water as a framework for multi-country cooperation.

Specifically, the SWP performs the following activities:

• Technical studies on the linkages between water resources and conflict and the benefits and costs of cooperation on shared waters.
• Facilitates shared strategic planning and donor-riparian dialogues.
• Holds high level government events, such as parliamentary conferences, to build multi-country awareness of shared water body issues.
• Supports processes to enable and finalize regional frameworks;
• Promotes regional data sharing and harmonization exercises.
• Promotes the development of shared water and environmental databases and analysis activities to enhance transparency, build participation and trust.
• Develops scenario modeling tools to allow regional parties to better understand transboundary waters in a broader context of peace, security and economic development.
• Builds capacity of transboundary water institutions in dispute resolution, public participation and management.

The SWP is a component of UNDP's Transboundary Waters Programme and is implemented by the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI and the UNDP Bratislava Regional Centre.

Download
Background paper by Anders Jägerskog on Transboundary Waters for the Ministerial Roundtable on Transboundary Waters: "Current Status of Cooperative Efforts on Transboundary Waters", World Water Forum, Marseille, France, March 13, 2012.