2017 Annual Report

Strengthening water governance for a just, prosperous and sustainable future

2017 continued in the brisk pace set by earlier years. Several initiatives to elevate water in our minds and on political agendas were set in motion and others kept running. SIWI contributed to the High-Level Panel on Water’s work on valuing water (released 2018) and to the 23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23), notably, co-hosting the Water Action Day.

Internally, we have worked hard to strengthen our processes and systems to build a stronger, better and faster SIWI to be able to keep up with demands and responding to the increasing pressures on our global water resources.

SIWI’s external work has included contributions to policy development on a global scale through our source-to-sea initiative, at the regional scale through our work on water and climate in Europe, and locally by bringing human rights into tariff setting in Bosnia and Herzegovina and supporting governments in the assessment and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

We have also improved business practices in textile, food, forest, and pharmaceutical industries. SIWI has built up significant competence and networks around the interface between private and public sectors with regards to infrastructure investments, especially in Africa, that we see as crucial for wise water management in the future.

While we broaden our engagement with water and water actors, we have also gone deeper to understand new facets of how intricate our human interactions are with water. By showing how societies’ gendered roles make women and men engage with water in different ways, we can begin to address glaring inequalities in access and voice. We instituted the Gold Standard of World Water Week to do our part in promoting and empowering younger and female voices in the global water debate.

We are more convinced than ever that an open and fact-based discussion between countries, sectors and actors on how our water is governed is the only way we can achieve a water wise world.