Room 201

Having access to safe drinking water and sanitation is central to living a life in dignity and upholding human rights. Yet billions of people still do not enjoy these fundamental rights.

The session intends to feature the effects of agroecology in irrigation schemes seeking to redesign food systems while preserving on the diversity of ecosystems. It will also present specific responses to water scarcity in the context of marginal lands and climate change. Favoring sustainability of natural resources and governance, protection of smallholder farmers and food security and line with the "One Water, One Health approach", agroecology optimizes mutually beneficial interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment.

The objective of this session is twofold.

The first objective is to highlight the benefits of innovative partnerships for protecting, maintaining and/or strengthening water and sanitation services during crises with concrete examples of successful actions.

The second will be to encourage a dialogue between the public and a representative sample of the diversity of actors present in crises context, in order to collectively identify solutions to foster multi-stakeholder responses for the protection and maintenance of WASH services in crisis contexts.

The session will be an opportunity to analyze and discuss in depth the constraints related to the large financing gaps to support the 2030 roadmap. A review of the weaknesses related to the classic 3T model will also be posed to highlight the weak points that require conceptual and practical adjustments. Most exciting, however, will be the presentation of concrete initiatives for innovation in water and sanitation and IWRM financing, including those based on testing and scaling up solutions involving private sector actors and other non-traditional sources of finance.

The "Dakar 2021 Initiative" aims, during the preparatory phase of the Forum, to select, label and popularize relevant, innovative, structuring and replicable national, regional and international projects, producing short-term results with a sustainable impact around the Forum's priorities, and whose purpose is to contribute to the acceleration of the achievement of the SDGs, and more particularly of SDG6.
The Dakar 2022 Initiative is the materialization of the vision: "From commitment to implementation of concrete actions on the ground".

The Mediterranean and the Sahel are among the poorest regions of the world in terms of fresh water, which leads them to use other types of water than lakes, rivers and aquifers, and which are therefore called non-conventional water resources: wastewater, which is treated to be reused, and salt water or marine water, which is desalinated. These mobilizations are developing rapidly in view of demographics and global warming, but at the cost of sharply rising energy consumption that runs counter to climate objectives.

With a steady increase in climate finance flow from developed to developing countries, there is a growing need to rigorously measure the real-term additionality, the consistency and ultimately the impacts on final beneficiaries in real terms. Increasing the effectiveness of drought finance is of vital interest for both financing partners and communities, whose inherent heterogeneity and diverse needs put a constraint on harmonizing the financing mechanisms and call for more flexible and innovative approaches.

This event will guide you through innovative financing approaches for NbS in developing countries and provide practical guidelines to develop business models for NbS projects based on the market study commissioned by Team International Organisations.

"SDG 6 of the 2030 Agenda wants to "Ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation", but the importance of water is also evident for the success of the other goals marked by the 2030 Agenda. Moreover, in the current global context of a health pandemic, water plays a central role in the economic and health recovery of states, promoting resilience, employment opportunities and health benefits and access to innovative financing.

8 out of 10 people without access to even a basic water supply live in rural areas. Overcoming this challenge means adopting new ways of working and attracting the necessary investment to expand and sustain rural water services. There are invest-ready service models but what is needed is a new generation of rural water professionals to make them work, and investors and governments to support them.