One of the primary drivers of funding in the WASH sector (and other aid sectors) has been the target set by the Millennium Development Goals: To halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and sanitation. While these goals have been undeniably successful in improving the lives of poor people across the world, one of the criticisms leveled at the MDG framework is that it ‘siloed’ development discussions – failing to consider interdependencies across sectors. The next step: developing the next set of goals – the Sustainable Development Goals.
Why do we care about the next set of goals?
The MDGs have driven the aid agenda for the past 15 years – and the next set of goals will probably play an important role in determining where the aid money flows to in the next 15 years. If they don’t include cross-sector, cross-cutting water issues now, the solutions we are working towards may fail to jump ahead onto the world stage.
How are the goals being determined?
In preparation for setting the next stage of goals, the United Nations set up the website “The World We Want 2015”, a place for people from across the world to engage in the dialogue around what goals should be set to achieve our desired future. A newly released report, “The Post 2015 Water Thematic Consultation Report” summarizes the discussions that took place around water and points towards a new water future. Demonstrating the primacy of water in solving the world’s problems, the authors report that the water theme received more social media attention and more comments than any of the other themes – almost triple the next most popular theme, “Inequalities”.
Check out the full report of the thematic cluster discussions here.
“The World We Want 2015” has a set of cool visualizations of each of the comments, discussions, and posts submitted to the website – showing the interdependencies and linkages between each comment. Check it out here.