By Winston Muleba Jr
The World Bank, the Government of the Netherlands
and the Rockefeller Foundation have launched a $200-million joint
Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership to generate
knowledge, promote innovation, and build country capacity for
meeting the water-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The partnership builds on a history of collaboration under the World
Bank’s various programs and partnerships on access to water and
sanitation, and will focus on five themes: sustainability, inclusion,
institutions, financing and resilience.
The Global Water Security & Sanitation Partnership will focus on
analytical work, technical assistance and financing in client
countries and has budgeted for activities up to the year 2022.
The
work will extend beyond providing infrastructure for water and
sanitation to ensuring the long-term availability of water resources
and ensuring that everyone has access.
Among other goals, the
partnership will bring private-sector financing to the water sector,
while ensuring that services remain affordable for the poor.
The
partnership also aims to produce “resilient solutions” that will
consider disaster risk and the impacts of climate change.
Launching the programme, World Bank partners stressed the
fundamental importance of ensuring global water security and the
need for joint action at the global scale.
Maarten Gischler, the
Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that the partnership
will enable the World Bank to make “more of a difference on the
ground” and deliver water security to millions of people.
A World Bank press release estimates the cost of universal access to
safely-managed water and sanitation services at US$114 billion a
year up to 2030.
No comments:
Post a Comment