The NDC Partnership Supports Countries to Leverage Opportunities Across the Water-Climate Nexus
As global leaders come together today in New York for the United Nations 2023 Water Conference, the NDC Partnership is stepping up support for countries to put to water at the heart of national economic policies and international decision-making.
“Increasingly, water is a stumbling block for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” says Netherlands Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Liesje Schreinemacher. “We aim to make water the driver to achieve our ambitions on climate, diversity, equity and prosperity. To do so, we must organize our resources locally and globally. This means changing our approach in two fundamental ways. First, we need to change the focus of water governance and apply a Water Nexus approach. Second, we need to value water for its economic worth and its broader ecosystem benefits. Countries’ climate commitments, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), are critical to the success of this approach.”
We must respond to the call to action from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water that “the world will fail on climate and development, if it fails on water.” Supporting water-climate adaptation and mitigation action is a way to implement development, climate and biodiversity goals. The Partnership supports countries to deliver on climate action, decreasing their climate vulnerability related to water and increasing public and private investments in Water-Nexus opportunities. Right now, 90% of countries’ NDCs, prioritize action on water for adaptation and roughly all National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) include water and sanitation as a priority sector (UNEP 2022). Yet implementation lags and financing is insufficient to ensure these targets are met. As a global coalition uniting more than 200 members, the Partnership is uniquely positioned to mobilize technical and other forms of support to help countries leverage opportunities across the Water Nexus.
To accelerate this effort, the NDC Partnership will be convening Ministers and Heads of organizations through an event with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on the sidelines of the UN Water Conference. The event will focus on the benefits of employing a Water-Nexus approach and identifying opportunities for strengthening support to countries. Additionally, the Partnership will draw together private sector actors for a roundtable discussion on the Water-Nexus approach and ways to increase private sector investment in this space.
Building on the momentum of the conference, with the initial financial support from the Netherlands of EUR 5 million, the NDC Partnership will provide technical assistance to countries to enhance the integration of water in formulating, updating, financing and implementing their NDCs. Specifically, the Partnership will provide guidance to countries on opportunities to strengthen NDC implementation through a water-climate nexus approach. Based on country requests, the Partnership will also help coordinate support from Partnership members.
“With initial support from the Netherlands, the NDC Partnership will help countries leverage opportunities across the Water Nexus. We welcome the creativity of our partners like IFAD, in exploring how we can effectively work together on this issue and ask everyone engaged in the Partnership to similarly contribute to putting water at the heart of economic policy making,” says Minister Schreinemacher.
To learn more and contribute, please reach out to the NDC Partnership’s Communications Manager for further inquiries.
For media inquiries:
Caitlin Pinkard / caitlin.pinkard@ndcpartnership.org / +1 (443) 786-4441
About the NDC Partnership
The NDC Partnership brings together more than 200 members, including more than 115 countries, developed and developing, and more than 80 institutions to create and deliver on ambitious climate action that help achieve the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Governments identify their NDC implementation priorities and the type of support that is needed to translate them into actionable policies and programs. Based on these requests, the membership offers a tailored package of expertise, technical assistance, and funding. This collaborative response provides developing countries with efficient access to a wide range of resources to adapt to and mitigate climate change and foster more equitable and sustainable development.