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ater
D
iplomacy
biodiversity benefits generated by reduced water pollution, micro-
economic impacts of improved water allocation (for example, for
agricultural productivity) and economic gains from the development
of large infrastructure for water storage, flood control or hydropower
generation. Some of these benefits are manifest as reduced costs of
water supply and power generation, or as reduced risks arising from
floods, droughts and disease. Other benefits of cooperation are less
well known – such as those related to reduced political tensions
(ultimately leading to reduced defence spending), opening opportu-
nities for cooperation in other areas (such as trade liberalization) or
the macroeconomic impacts of improved water management facili-
tated by cooperation.
On one hand, it is clear that there are significant benefits from
cooperation. On the other, when countries fail to cooperate and
instead compete for use of the water resource, the costs can be high.
Aquifers draw down due to competing pumping, crops die as flows
dip in the growing season and the land floods as water is released
in the winter, ice flows disrupt navigation and power generation,
polluted waters impact on the health of downstream communities
and raise the costs of drinking water supply, reservoirs are silted up
by sediments, and so on. Transboundary cooperation, based on the
Helsinki and New York conventions, can help to prevent such costs.
Besides providing information on the benefits of cooperation
internationally, water management – both nationally and in the trans-
boundary context – needs intersectoral cooperation. A particularly
successful approach to fostering the sort of intersectoral coopera-
tion that forms an essential foundation for better water management
is embodied by the national policy dialogues on integrated water
resources management and water supply and sanitation, being held
within the European Union Water Initiative. UNECE – focusing on
water sector reforms to achieve integrated water resources manage-
ment – is working with the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development – which is focusing more on economic and finan-
cial analyses – to implement these dialogues in nine
countries across Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. The objective of each policy dialogue is
to facilitate the reform of water policies in a particu-
lar country or region. Each policy dialogue involves
high-level representatives of all key partners, including
national and basin authorities, representatives of relevant
international organizations, civil society (non-govern-
mental organizations) and the private sector.
The national policy dialogues have also provided a
forum for discussions on the setting of national targets
relating to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation,
the subject of the Helsinki Convention’s Protocol on
Water and Health. The protocol, adopted and signed
by 35 states in London in 1999, now has 26 contracting
parties in the UNECE region. Each party has to set, and
subsequently implement, targets in 20 areas covering
the entire water cycle. For example, in relation to sani-
tation, target areas cover access to sanitation, the level
of performance of sanitation systems, the application of
recognized good practices to the management of sanita-
tion, and the disposal and reuse of sewage sludge from
sanitation systems.
The process of target setting is flexible and adaptable
to specific national conditions. Thus, the parties appre-
ciate the target setting and reporting process as a useful
policymaking and planning tool that enhances intersec-
toral cooperation – which is where the national policy
dialogue helps – and assists governments to express
clearly and transparently their priorities in progressing
towards universal access to safe water and sanitation.
Both globally and in the UNECE region, advances in
access to water and sanitation are being made. But safe
The signing of the Treaty on the Dniester River Basin in Rome in 2012
Image: UNECE