The objective of the International Year of Water Cooperation (IYWC) is to raise awareness, both on the potential for increased cooperation, and on the challenges facing water management in light of the increased demand for water access, allocation and services.
The Year will highlight the history of successful water cooperation, as well as identify issues on education, diplomacy, transboundary water management, financing, national and international legal frameworks, and linkages with the Millennium Development Goals. It also will provide an opportunity to capitalize on the momentum created at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), and to support the formulation of new objectives that will contribute towards developing water resources that are truly sustainable.
Water Cooperation in focus
The 2013 World Water Day, on 22 March 2013, will be dedicated to water cooperation. And the theme of the World Water Week in Stockholm 2013 is "Water Cooperation: Building Partnerships."
The Global Water Partnership is an official Collaborating Partner of the World Water Week in Stockholm 2013, together with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the World Wide Fund for Nature. Abstracts and Event proposals.
GWP creates partnerships
Creating partnerships around water resources management is the foundation of the GWP network. Celebrating water cooperation at an international level is therefore an important manifestation for what GWP Partners are doing at all levels from the local to the global.
We believe that GWP Partnerships make a difference through cooperation. Water cooperation is:
- About sharing the benefits of water
- Achievable and the only way to achieve a water secure future
- Important at different scales – local to regional to global
- Vertical (upstream to downstream), where stakeholders get together to share a common vision, and develop and agree on a plan.
- Horizontal, where partners to put in their specific expertise and resources so as to maximise both.
- An instrument of peace, bringing people and institutions together, instead of driving them apart.