Water in the World We Want: A project addressing the challenge of producing critical evidence under data-limited conditions for water-related policies through developing, testing, and implementing SDG 6 Policy Support System (SDG-PSS)
Description
Although a formidable challenge for many countries, achieving SDG 6 by 2030 through successful water and sanitation management will be a foundation to achieve many other SDGs directly or indirectly. Effective planning and policy implementation through strengthening and realigning enabling environments are critical to driving success in the water sector. However, evidence and appropriate data for policymakers and development actors to make this happen is missing, overlapping or even fragmented in many countries. The project “Water in the World We Want” addressed the challenge of producing critical evidence for water-related policies by developing SDG 6 Policy Support System (SDG-PSS).
If countries are to achieve SDG 6 by 2030, they need to assess their current national progress effectively. This means defining gaps and weaknesses and addressing them with workable policies and action plans to foster strong enabling environments for the achievement of SDG 6. Countries also need to set their own national baselines, targets, and priorities in the general SDG process and focus on the ones that can be realistically achieved by 2030.<br />
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Against this scenario, reliable evidence provides a strong foundation for countries to advocate for a rational and systematic approach to inform their policy processes and support decisions to meet SDG 6. While decision making in the SDG era is not always simple, it can be quite complex, requiring policymakers and development actors to assess and combine many pieces of evidence from different agencies and sectors. Deciding on exactly which piece of evidence is ‘fit-for-purpose’ for decision making is challenging amid missing, overlapping or even fragmented data in many countries.<br />
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Initiated in September 2016, the first phase of the project “Water in the World We Want” (completed in December 2018) was implemented with the specific objective to enable cross-sectorial evidence‐based collaboration between experts and policymakers and to promote the strengthening of the enabling environment around national water and sanitation management, with the overall objective of successfully achieving SDG 6. <br />
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The project team developed a key product “SDG Policy Support System (SDG-PSS)” – a platform designed to help countries improve their data analysis, reporting, and progress toward achieving SDG 6 and other water-related SDG targets. The SDG-PSS was designed, tested and improved in a hands-on process by five partner countries – Costa Rica, Ghana, Pakistan, Republic of Korea, and Tunisia. <br />
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With a focus on SDG 6, the SDG-PSS has the following critical components: capacity needs assessment; financial management; policy and institutional aspects; gender mainstreaming; disaster risk reduction (DRR)/resilience; integrity; and data status.<br />
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The project planners, water managers and policymakers can use SDG-PSS to easily translate trends, information, and data into collaborative planning to develop, implement and measure the effectiveness of water-related policies while addressing national SDG 6 targets. This first online version of SDG-PSS is available at http://sdgpss.net/en/. <br />
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The SGD-PSS gives country water professionals, managers and policy makers a more precise view of the data that is missing in their national processes and guides them in gathering and analyzing the relevant available data, information, and trends to deliver on SDG 6 targets. It is a strategic tool to encourage cooperation between agencies and water research community in a joint policy development process. As it progresses, SDG-PSS has the potential to become a powerful knowledge sharing platform for learning between countries – as all data and information are presented in common formats using a common set of indicators. The enhanced cross-agency and sector collaboration made possible by the SDG-PSS is expected to trigger the journey towards successful achievement of SDG 6 and other water-related SDG targets.
This project was jointly implemented by institutions from five countries – Ghana, Tunisia, Pakistan, Costa Rica, and Republic of Korea – in a ‘champion system’, in which at least one policymaker and one water professional in each country were responsible for promoting the project and providing coordination for the development of the SDG-PSS. The criteria for choosing the five champion countries included: regional diversity, geographic location with countries representing three major regions – Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean; variation in the availability of annual renewable water resources per capita; proportion of population using safely-managed water supplies; and the proportion of population using at least basic sanitation facilities.
In the water sector, multiple agencies, complex science, and uncertainty all lead to difficulties in using evidence to design effective policies. The ‘champion system’ approach used to develop SDG-PSS was critical to provide guidance and learning from the challenges and needs of each national context regarding water-related policies.
Since the project began, the partners have worked together to build the SDG-PSS that can navigate through limited data conditions for different targets and indicators of SDG 6. The professionals, researchers, and policymakers from the champion countries shared their experiences, suggestions, and knowledge in meetings, workshops, and bilateral communication. Out of these interactions grew the SDG-PSS, which was first developed as an Excel-based system has transitioned into a web-based resource. The English version is available online while French and Spanish versions are in preparation along with an e-course with five modules to provide training and teaching on how to use this system to produce evidence and data on the enabling environment for achieving SDG 6. The SDG-PSS is designed as a collaborative resource, and the project team encourages users to provide feedback, which will be included in the refinement of the tool.
To promote the project approach and its key product – SDG-PSS, the project team has organized special sessions at key water-related international forums such as World Water Congress, Mexico (May 2017), World Water Week, Sweden (August 2017), Korea International Water Week (September 2017), and Asia International Water Week (September 2017). In these events, the project partners engaged a broader group of public policy makers and water experts to enrich learning from the SDG-PSS experience.
The SDG-PSS consists of the following components: has the following critical components: capacity needs assessment; financial management; policy and institutional aspects; gender mainstreaming; disaster risk reduction/resilience; integrity; and data status. These components were chosen as they allow a better understanding of the enabling environment where water and sanitation policies are developed and implemented for achieving SDG 6. Through this system, policymakers, scientists and development actors are empowered to gather the critical information, evidence and data (where available) needed to define and develop national policies and policy action to address water-related issues in the SDG era.
As data is entered into the SDG-PSS at indicator level for each critical component, the system automatically synthesizes and evaluates national-level data, trends, and information against SDG 6 targets and indicators. This gives users one summary of strengths, gaps, and needs for SDG 6 indicators. Policymakers can view a range of summary reports for different components as these reports are strategic information for collaborative planning to develop, implement and assess the performance of water-related policies.
The trial phase of SDG-PSS contributed to addressing the needs and challenges for water-related policymaking. For instance, in Pakistan, poor implementation of policies and insufficient financial resources were the main challenges, and SDG-PSS provided the means for identifying weaker financial capacity specific to SDG target 6.3. More broadly, the system also offered an opportunity for the public sector institutions to estimate the financial resources to support their set aspirations for 2030. For Tunisia, on the other hand, the SDG-PSS helped to develop disaggregated local and region-specific indicators to reflect on regional development. The Republic of Korea indicated that according to evidence obtained through SDG-PSS, current policies for water use efficiency and water stress are not enough, as coordination and cooperation among lead central and subnational government bodies and related organizations are not smoothly performed.
The development, testing, and implementation of the SDG-PSS has received attention from a range of UN-Water partners and SDG 6 global community. For example, SDG-PSS is mentioned in the Integrated Monitoring Guide for Sustainable Development Goal 6 as a potential analytical tool to support national level, cross-sectoral, evidence-based, policymaking, and planning (http://www.unwater.org/publications/good-practices-sdg-6-monitoring/). Beyond project countries, several additional countries have shown interest to be engaged with the project and its product – SDG-PSS. The project is expected to expand to around 40 countries in its second phase (2019-2020).
Nevertheless, methodologies to collect and treat data for SDG 6 targets and indicators are still being discussed. As the SDG-PSS relies on tools, processes, and practices already available, lack of data capacity might prevent further progress. For instance, in the case of the Republic of Korea, no national statistics matching the data required by indicators in Targets 6.3 and 6.4 were available, hence producing and agreeing on new data was necessary. Even though this process was helpful to understand those targets numerically, the limitations of the data did not allow to enter the data required into SDG-PSS for all indicators. In Costa Rica, the processes to define the indicators and data used to report SDGs are still on the way. Since the beginning of 2018, Costa Rica had been working on the SDG 6 indicators, and plan to start the validation of national goals during 2019. Once the targets are defined, the SDG-PSS is expected to support the technical work that needs to be done to set realistic goals. In Tunisia, a high-level decision was taken at the Ministry of Agriculture to adopt SDG-PSS for reporting on the SDG 6 in the country and for disseminating the system at regional and local levels for improved quality and reliability of the data.
Feeding the system with data might also add some complexity to the work of using SDG-PSS. Experience gained during the first phase this project has shown that the SDG-PSS requires expertise from different agencies (e.g. gender, integrity, finance, and climate change). For this reason, countries might need to task specialists to manage SDG-PSS to produce results that meet the needs of federal level ministries and national institutions involved in SDG 6. Against this background, the online version of SDG-PSS is expected to allow countries to assemble a national team that has access to a common system, and where they can work together on the critical components of the system.
With the need to include more countries and expand the use of SDG-PSS, the objective would be to cluster 8-10 countries around each trial country from phase 1 acting as a regional hub for cross learning stemming from a range of water-related challenges, water resources availability and quality, and management practices and policies. The selection criteria for new countries in phase 2 would be: (1) diversity and geographic location with respect to the regional hub country; (2) variation in the availability of annual renewable water resources per capita; (3) proportion of population using safely managed water supplies; (4) proportion of population using at least basic sanitation facilities; (5) high level of interest to participate in the project; (6) willingness to revisit existing investments, policies and institutional settings dealing with water resources management; (7) economic status based on based on the World Bank’s country classification ; (8) status of skilled human resources dealing with water resources management; and (9) level of awareness within the public policy arena on water resources management.
The training course on SDG-PSS, an e-course, will consist of the following five modules: an introduction to SDG-PSS; accessing and registering in the system; SDG-PSS components; entering data in the SDG-PSS, and reporting in the SDG-PSS. Each module will consist of video lectures, reading supplements, graded evaluations or assignments and discussion board to develop a community of practice. On completion of this self-paced e-course, the participants should be able to: access the SDG-PSS online; navigate through the SDG-PSS pages and its components; use the SDG-PSS to generate and analyze evidence on the national progress and the enabling environment of the achievement of SDG 6; and propose changes to SDG-PSS, if any.
Achieving SDG 6 at the national level is a challenging task that requires concerted efforts from water-related institutions, policymakers, and development actors to develop new or realign existing policies, need-specific human capacity development, arrange financial resources, establish monitoring and evaluation systems along with harmonizing collaboration across institutions. There is now an opportunity for the project to showcase SDG-PSS as a critical tool that all countries regardless of their current progress on SDG 6 can use for ‘fit-for-purpose’ policymaking. All five trial countries have worked on SDG-PSS, and this effort has allowed them to assess the possibilities that SDG-PSS brings to better inform policy-makers.<br />
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Water managers and professionals and policymakers can use SDG-PSS to easily translate trends, information, and data into collaborative planning to develop, implement and measure the effectiveness of water-related policies while addressing national SDG 6 targets. This first online version of SDG-PSS is available at http://sdgpss.net/en/. The SGD-PSS gives country water professionals, managers and policy makers a more precise view of the data that is missing in their national processes and guides them in gathering and analyzing the relevant available data, information, and trends to deliver on SDG 6 targets. It is a strategic tool to encourage cooperation between agencies and water research community in a joint policy development process. As it progresses, SDG-PSS has the potential to become a powerful knowledge sharing platform for learning between countries – as all data and information are presented in common formats using a common set of indicators.<br />
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The impact of the project is a more comprehensive and effective evidence base on water-related SDGs. It has the potential to improve the exchange of data, experience and policy information between institutions within a country and across countries – as data entered in the SDG-PSS from various levels and locations are in a similar format and analyzed according to a set of common criteria. The system may also bring together a network of government actors who exchange knowledge, promote evidence-based policy and collaborate more closely to generate water evidence.<br />
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The development, testing, and implementation of the SDG-PSS has received attention from a range of UN-Water partners and the SDG 6 global community. For example, the SDG-PSS is mentioned in the Integrated Monitoring Guide for Sustainable Development Goal 6 as a potential analytical tool to support national level, cross-sectoral, evidence-based, policymaking, and planning (http://www.unwater.org/publications/good-practices-sdg-6-monitoring/). Beyond the five project countries, several countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean have shown interest to be engaged with the project and its product – SDG-PSS. The project is expected to expand to around 40 countries in its second phase (2019-2020).
Sustainable development goal 6 – two gaps in the race for indicators: This discussion paper was developed by members of project partner institutions and champion countries. It provides a description of the project’s achievements and shares their discussion on the policy-critical components of the SDG-PSS. Among its main conclusions are that the trial the SDG-PSS in five countries demonstrated that agreeing on key components of an enabling environment at a national level can foster collaborative efforts and target critical actions. It showed that SDG-PSS can be used in low-, middle- and high-income countries for effective prioritization and planning around MoI for SDG 6 at the national level. It also showed that SDG-PSS can be used in different ways in different contexts to assess and monitor the MoI for SDG 6, and that government decision makers and experts can innovate together to progress this work when a collaborative environment is created (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11625-018-0649-z).
Accelerating Water-Related SDG Success: 6 Steps and 6 Components for SDG 6: This policy brief, published in English and French languages, address the challenges of achieving SDG 6 and how the six critical components of the SDG-PSS and the six proposed steps can shed some light on the problems faced by countries. The six steps aim to support countries towards an evidence-based approach that relies on cross-sector, inter-agency collaboration and dynamic planning. It presents core features of the SDG-PSS aligned with the six-step water SDG planning process for use by national level planners (http://inweh.unu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Policy-Brief_Issue04.pdf).
Accelerating the Achievement of SDG 6 in five countries: A Discussion paper (http://inweh.unu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/SDG-Discussion-paper.pdf)
SDG 6 Policy Support System (SDG-PSS): SDG-PSS is designed as part of the project ‘Water in the World We Want’ to enable government actors and stakeholders to better collaborate to create national-level evidence around SDG 6, its targets and indicators (http://sdgpss.net/en/).
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Contact Information
Manzoor Qadir, Assistant Director