Dear friends of the Utility Platform,
Water is high on the political agenda this year. In March, the United Nations hosted its first water conference in 50 years; in May, UN-Habitat's Global Water Operators' Partnership Alliance (GWOPA) invited the global community engaged in water operators’ partnerships (WOPs) to gather in Bonn at the 5th Global WOPs Congress. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) subsequently hosted the high-level event "Water Operators‘ Partnerships – Sustainable Water Security Beyond Aid" in Berlin, followed by the 6th International Networking Event of the Utility Platform.
SDG 6 – Clean Water and Sanitation, along with four other goals of the 2030 Agenda, was subject to intensive discussion at the United Nations’ High-Level Political Forum, which also serves to pave the way for the UN SDG Summit in September. It became evident that global progress in drinking water supply must be increased six-fold, in sanitation five-fold and in hygiene three-fold in order to achieve the goal. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, therefore insisted: "Water must be at the centre of the global political agenda."
In this issue of our newsletter, we look back at the last five months and sum up the learnings for the water sector and for our network. We report on our last network meeting, which provided an opportunity for the members of the Utility Platform to exchange ideas across partnerships and to work on making the cooperation between the partner utilities even more effective and efficient.
We also provide very concrete insights into the joint work of the utility partnerships: for example in field visits, measurement work and a laboratory course. Furthermore, we would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the great willingness of German municipal companies to donate technical goods for the repair and reconstruction of water infrastructure in Ukraine. The number of solidarity partnerships with Ukraine also keeps growing, which makes us particularly grateful.
In this context, we would like to draw attention to this year's German-Ukrainian Municipal Partnership Conference in Leipzig. Under the motto "Together for Europe: Solidarity, Reconstruction, Prospects for the Future" the event will be held from 13 to 15 November 2023. German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and German Development Minister Svenja Schulze will contribute to the high-level programme with their keynote speeches. German-Ukrainian utility partnerships from our network are very welcome to join the conference.
Have an inspiring read and please feel free to share our newsletter with your colleagues!
Your Utility Platform team Heiko Heidemann (GIZ) und Linda Engel (SKEW)
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