Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals
Aims and Scope
The IAHR Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims at coordinating IAHR’s activities in support of the global efforts to achieve the SDGs by 2030. For this purpose, it collaborates with several IAHR Technical Committees. Besides SDG 6 which aims at ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, the effort to achieve several other SDGs can benefit from the experience and knowledge of IAHR members on the hydraulics of engineered structures and natural systems, especially on matters pertaining to their environmental protection and sustainable management. Goals that directly or indirectly affected by or depend on water include ending poverty in all its forms (SDG 1); eliminating hunger and providing food security (SDG 2); ensuring good health and well-being for all (SDG 3); affordable, reliable, sustainable and clean energy (SDG 7); safe, resilient and sustainable cities (SDG 11); sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12); climate change (SDG 13); and biodiversity, forests, deforestation (SDG 15).
Universitat Politècnica de València. Departamento de Ingeniería Hidráulica y Medio Ambiente
Spain
History
Following the adaptation of these Sustainable Development Goals of by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015, the Working Group on Global Water Security included the SDGs in its scope recognizing their close relationship with water security. A special session in the 37th IAHR World Congress in 2017 in Kuala Lumpur explored how IAHR can contribute to achieving the SDGs. This led to the publication of special issue of Hydrolink magazine with several articles describing the contribution of several IAHR Technical Committees to the SDGs. (Download Issue 3, 2017 | Link 1 | Link 2). In 2019 the IAHR Executive Committee decided to split the Working Group on Global Water Security to two separate groups, one on global water security and one on the SDGs.
Focus on UN Water
The Working Group is now focusing its efforts in supporting the work of the UN Water program, whose primary goal is to help UN Member States to sustainably manage water and sanitation and achieve the water related SDGs.
Recent IAHR activities in this context include
Annual meeting of the SDG Working Group on 21 June 2022 in Granada Spain.
Participation in the semi-annual meetings of UN Water since 2019. The most recent of these meetings was on April 7-8, 2022 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Contribution to the WWDR2023, whose theme is “Accelerating Change: Partnerships and Cooperation”.
Participation in activities in preparation for the 2023 UN Water Conference
Publication of a white paper on “the role of engineers in the effort to achieve SDG 6”.
Links to Relevant Documents & Resources
Hydrolink issue 2023-1 on IAHR's work in support of the SDGs
32nd UN Water meeting report for partners and other stakeholders
Annotated table of contents of the World Water Development Report 2021 on “Valuing Water” (dated December 2019)
Report of the Inception Meeting on World Water Development Report 2021 on “Valuing Water” held in September 19
Agenda 2030 adapted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 · SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation based on data on the 11 indicators for monitoring progress towards SDG 6
SDG 6 indicator reports prepared by the Global Environmental Management Initiative (GEMI)
Hydrolink issue 2017-3 on IAHR's work in support of the SDGs
SDG 6 Data Portal, an interactive online tool that brings together data on the SDG 6 global indicators and other key social, economic and environmental parameters and facilitates their analysis
Contact
If you are interested in joining the Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals or learning more about its work, please contact Derek Cai of the IAHR Secretariat at derek.cai@iahr.org.