Transboundary Water Cooperation for Sustainable Development in African Basins and Globally Facilitated through the Water Convention

Supporting cooperation and integrated basin management in Central and Western Africa to drive regional integration, sustainable development, peace and security

Transboundary cooperation, as required by SDG target 6.5 on integrated water resources management, is crucial for ensuring water and sanitation for all (SDG 6) and for achieving other SDGs on climate action, sustainable energy, ecosystem protection, poverty, food security and peace. To respond to the challenges of weak transboundary water cooperation, the Water Convention adopts a multi-pronged approach. 

Global and regional workshops under the Convention, for example, on transboundary water cooperation in Africa, support a South-South capacity-building approach to accelerate progress towards the SDGs, particularly target 6.5, among basin states and from basin to basin, both in terms of riparian states and basin organizations. For example, the 2019 ‘Practitioner to Practitioner:  Regional Training on Promoting Implementation to Two Global Water Conventions’ workshop, organized by UNECE together with partners targeting experts active in Francophone countries in West, North and Central Africa, fostered a common understanding on the practical benefits of both the Water Convention and the Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (commonly referred to as the Watercourses Convention), collectively known as the United Nations global water conventions. As another example, in 2017, in partnership with the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Investment Bank and the Senegal River Basin Development Organization, the Convention secretariat organized a training in Dakar on preparing bankable project proposals for climate change adaptation in transboundary basins, where experts from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe exchanged experiences. 

Outcomes achieved in relations to the SDG targets: 

The first report on the global baseline for SDG indicator 6.5.2 published in 2018 demonstrated that the highest level of cooperation can be found in the Pan-European region, largely facilitated by the Water Convention, followed by West and Southern Africa, including, for example, the Senegal, Gambia, Volta and Niger Rivers. The water charters of the Niger, Volta and Lake Chad Basins refer to the Water Convention. Moreover, since its global opening in 2016, there has been a very promising trend within Africa, particularly Central and Western Africa, towards accession to the Water Convention. In 2018, Chad and Senegal were the first countries outside the UNECE region to accede to the Water Convention and Ghana joined both United Nations global water conventions in June 2020. 

This initiative has been sustainable through the following: