The water consultation is part of the UN-system led “global dialogue” comprising of 50-100 Country Consultations and eleven global Thematic Consultations, including one on water. The water consultation is mainly taking place as an online discussion using different social media. The purpose is to bring voices from a broad range of stakeholders to build consensus around key future challenges related to water and the need for a new global water goal in the post-2015 development agenda.

The thematic consultation on water is divided in three sub-consultations:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
• Water resources
• Wastewater management and water quality

On January 14, all sub-consultations started their online activity inviting everyone to share their insights and opinions on different topics. Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) will lead and moderate the first week under the Water Resources Management theme, which opens with a focus on water and energy.

Water for Energy – Energy for Water

Water and energy linkages have rapidly risen to the forefront of attention among urgent themes related to development challenges in the international community. The importance of water as a key pillar to sustain human well-being, secure livelihood opportunities and provide bases for diverse productive uses has long been recognized. In a similar manner, the need for energy to raise people out of poverty and fuel growing economies, whilst sustaining mature ones, is a well-established fact. The notion about how these resources are linked and dependent on each other has for a long time gone unnoticed by the broader global community, but not any more. The fact that energy needs water in its production and that water needs energy in order to be extracted, treated and moved is quickly gathering awareness as the demand for diminishing water resources increases.

Simultaneously the demand for energy is projected to grow massively over the next 20 years. The challenges and opportunities tied to this development are great and have been recognised in different ways by major development institutions. The World Economic Forum ranks water supply challenges at number three on their Global Risk Ranking for the coming years. In the UN report titled “Secretary-General’s Initial Input to the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals” (2012), the entire nexus of water, energy and food security is ranked as separate topics on the top three positions for priority areas among member states.

You can read our full paper about water and energy at www.worldwewant2015.org/water/waterresources where you can contribute to the discussion and post your own comments. You can also participate through social media via Twitter using the hashtag #waterpost2015 or visit the Facebook page WaterPost2015.

SIWI encourages everyone to take the opportunity to participate in the consultation on water and energy during January 14-20, 2013, and be part of creating the world we want.

The outcome from the different discussions will be summarised into policy recommendations in a final report that will be transmitted to the High-level Panel on Post-2015 appointed by the UN Secretary General at the end of March.

SIWI’s Torgny Holmgren on Water Resources Management

The water consultation is divided into two interactive phases: Phase I is the global water consultation, which focuses on broad challenges to trigger engagement and discussion. The global consultation will remain online and active for the whole duration of the consultation.

Phase II focuses on thematic sub-consultations broadly in the areas of:

• Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH)
• Water resources
• Wastewater management and water quality

Phase II starts in mid-January and runs up to March 3rd 2013. In March, the outcome from the different discussions will be summarised into policy recommendations in a final report that will be transmitted to the High-level Panel on Post-2015 appointed by the UN Secretary General at the end of March.

SIWI is engaged in the Thematic Consultation on Water and encourages everyone to take the opportunity to share your insights and opinions on a new global water goal in the post-2015 development agenda.

See below for the guidelines how to get involved in the discussions.

Engage in the online discussion!

To engage in the water consultation online, visit: www.worldwewant2015.org/water

You can also participate through social media, on Twitter using the hashtag #waterpost2015 or visit the Facebook page WaterPost2015.

Guidelines on how to get engaged – Water in the post-2015 development agenda

How to engage
The Thematic Consultation on Water is part of the UN-system led “global dialogue” comprising around 100 Country Consultations and 11 global Thematic Consultations including one on water. The water consultation is mainly taking place as an on-line web-based discussion using different social media. The purpose is to bring in voices from a broad range of stakeholders to build a consensus around key future challenges in water and the need for a new global water goal in the post-2015 development agenda.
The web-based consultation will consist of two broad parts; the general global dialogue on water, and the sub-consultations with focus on particular sub-sets of water. The consultation is co-led by UN-Water, UNDESA and UNICEF. UNICEF is responsible for designing and managing the water web-page, and has a web designer/manager based in New York (Robert Kerins, e-mail rkerins@unicef.org). An on-line engagement specialist will be soon incorporated to the working team and will work closely with the web-manager and on all sub-consultations.

General Global Dialogue on water (November 2012 – March 2013)
The objective is to host a consultation focusing broadly on water, aiming to attract a wide array of participants to discuss water from different perspectives. There are different ways to engage:
• Comment: interact and comment directly on the webpage www.worldwewant2015.org/water. We encourage you to register so we are able to follow some key feature of who has taken part in the consultation.
• Twitter: Tweet news; state your views on Twitter. Twitter account@WaterPost2015 has been created; we encourage you to use the hashtag#waterpost2015.
• Facebook: read news, post news, state you views. Facebook group WaterPost2015 has been created.
• Water-2015 related news: suggest current news and developments related to water and the post-2015 development agenda, the SDG process, cover events and more on the webpage.
• Quiz and questions: participating in quiz or polls on pertinent water challenges to raise awareness.
• Videos/YouTube clips: suggest existing water related videos/YouTube clips to inform or inspire discussions (professional or amateur videos) or provide a new one.
• Links to other sources and web-pages: suggest links to other relevant sources and web-pages, blogs and similar that can create awareness about the water consultation or for reach out.

Sub-consultations (January – February 2013)
This part of the water consultation will focus on identified key challenges for the future water agenda and is looking for a broad participation of stakeholders engaged in water issues. These discussions will be moderated and kicked off by an eminent person posing some urgent questions to be discussed on-line. There will be various means of interaction by the public, primarily through posting direct comments on the web-page, by twitter or the Facebook page.

Other means of engagement
Several global, regional and national meetings/events are taking place independently of the post-2015 process, which are of high relevance for the consultation. In these meetings awareness about the water consultation can be raised and participants can also take active part in the discussions, for example feeding in to the news section of the web-page and reporting on outcomes of deliberations via blogging and twitter. During the meetings interviews can be recorded asking questions to participants on priorities and challenges for the new post-2015 development framework and what would be the best possible outcome. Through these meetings recommendations or questions can also be directed to the water consultation for discussion.