The SEEAW in the context of
Integrated Water Resource
Management and the MDGs
Roberto Lenton
Chair,
Technical Committee
Global Water Partnership
Outline

Context: The challenges of monitoring and
assessing water resources for the MDGs within
an integrated approach

The role and value of SEEAW within this
context

Issues for the future, and the proposed roundtable mechanism
Context: The challenges
Monitoring and assessing
water resources
for the MDGs
within
an integrated approach
Global Water
Partnership
Water: impacts both on Target #10 and
on the MDGs as a whole
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality
Goal 5: Improve maternal health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and
programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources
Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking
water and basic sanitation
Target 11: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100
million slum dwellers
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development
Monitoring Frameworks for the MDGs
Target #10:


Established Institutional Mechanism: Joint Monitoring
Programme of UNICEF/WHO
Agreed conceptual framework for defining and
measuring access
Water’s broader role for the MDGs as a whole:


Institutional Mechanism: the World Water Assessment
Programme and the WWDRs
No agreed conceptual framework as yet
Why monitoring and assessing water for all the
MDGs is so much more complicated!








Overall development goals (MDGs translated at national levels)
Water and development “objectives” related to goals
Actions to address these objectives, within IWRM approach
Targets to make goals, objectives and actions specific -- with
defined and measurable criteria for achievement and timetables
Indicators -- to assess progress towards the targets associated
with goals and objectives and the accomplishment of actions
Process indicators, which monitor the basic progress of
implementing agreed actions
Outcome indicators, which monitor the direct results of actions.
Impact indicators, which monitor progress towards achieving goals
and objectives.
Integrated Water Resources Management: Some core
features

Involves developing efficient, equitable and sustainable solutions
to water and development problems

Involves aligning interests and activities that are traditionally seen
as unrelated or not well coordinated (horizontally and vertically)

Needs knowledge from various disciplines as well as insights from
diverse stakeholders

Not just water: involves integrating water in overall sustainable
development processes. Also requires coordinating the
management of water with land and related resources
Timing is crucial




Recent establishment of SG’s Advisory Board on Water and
Sanitation to improve global strategic focus around water
2005 was target date for completion of “IWRM and Water
Efficiency” Strategies and Plans, an action target set at
WSSD
2006 is the first year of “Water for Life” decade of action to
achieve the MDGs
2006 saw launch of series of assessments by WWDR (2006,
2009, 2012, 2015)
The role and value
of
SEEAW
Global Water
Partnership
Value of SEEAW within MDG/IWRM context

Provides the much-needed conceptual framework for monitoring and
assessment

Enables consideration and quantification of inter-linkages that are critical
to an IWRM approach

By integrating water and economic accounts, facilitates the
mainstreaming of water policy in economic decision making

Enables linkages with other natural resource accounts (e.g., land)

Enables different stakeholders to have a consistent and transparent
frame of information from which to develop recommendations

Provides effective framework for considering specific issues (e.g.,
allocative efficiency)

Enables further specific indicators to be derived from it

Timing is exactly right!
Credibility and authority are critically important too!

SEEAW has credibility and authority that
comes with:
 Being based on established system of national
accounts
 Having been developed with expertise from the
statistical community
 Having been tested in several countries
My personal view

Would be a huge step forward if framework
were accepted as an internationally agreed
standard for integrating hydrologic and
economic statistics

Nevertheless, several issues need further work

Need a mechanism to address them while
promoting implementation and use of SEEAW
Issues
and
mechanisms
for the future
Global Water
Partnership
Issues to consider: the other E’s

How to address the social dimension
 Supplementary accounts

Water Quality
 Impact on other resources (e.g., salinity)

Uses of water for environmental goods and
services
 Valuation issues
Issues to consider: Temporal and spatial variability

Temporal variability
 Hydrology and economy operate at different time
scales
 How to deal with extreme events, disaster risk
reduction

Spatial variability
 Hydrology and economy operate at different spatial
scales
Need mechanism for continuing work


Focus on both advancing SEEAW and promoting
implementation and use
Some desirable characteristics:
 Involve the key actors, including the WWAP and the Advisory
Board on Water and Sanitation
 Include both users and producers
 Include members of both statistical and the water community
 Bring in additional social, economic and environmental
expertise
 Enable continuing testing by participating countries

Proposed roundtable on water accounting would seem
to be step in the right direction
Thank you