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1 Localizing and Mainstreaming Global Initiatives on Water, Climate Change and Sustainable Development

       Vishnu Prasad Pandey1,5, Binaya Raj Shivakoti2, Sangam Shrestha3, and David Wiberg4

       ¹ Nepal Office, International Water Management Institute, Lalitpur, Nepal

       ² Natural Resources and Ecosystem Services Unit, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Hayama, Japan

       ³ Department of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, Asian Institute of Technology, Pathumthani, Thailand

       ⁴ Hydro‐informatics Group, International Water Management Institute, Colombo, Sri Lanka

       ⁵ Department of Civil Engineering, Pulchowk Campus, Institute of Engineering, Tribhunva University, Nepal

      ABSTRACT

      Various drivers such as population growth, land use/cover change, unsustainable consumption pattern, and climate change are putting pressure on limited resources available within our planetary boundaries, thus, raising concerns on their sustainability. Coordinated actions at levels ranging from global to local are required to ensure sustainability goals are achieved. A large number of global initiatives exists at global level to address sustainability challenges. They have direct or indirect links with water and climate. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) are the two recent initiatives agreed around five years ago by the global community. Since then, various efforts have been taken to transfer these global aspirations into practice. Localizing and mainstreaming these global goals have become indispensable to ensure effective implementation in the remaining 10 years, though countries are facing challenges with it. This chapter sheds light on sustainability challenges and global initiatives in general, and water and climate change in particular; discusses how water and climate change have evolved as global agendas; and then sheds light on formulation and governance of the SDGs, including the link of SDG6 (i.e. clean water and sanitation) with other 16 SDGs. Finally, considerations for achieving the SDGs and challenges and opportunities associated with localizing the global initiatives such as SDGs and PCA are discussed. The considerations include advancing science, technology, and innovations; making coherent policies and programs across the sectors; investment in technology and data to drive improvements; promoting science‐policy interface; and building/strengthening both institutional and human capacities.

1.1 SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGES AND GLOBAL INITIATIVES

Population growth, land use/cover change, unsustainable consumption patterns, desertification, urbanization, biodiversity loss and climate change are among the key global challenges that are impacting humans and the ecosystem in various ways. They are putting stress on our planet’s resources and threatening the very sustainability of livelihood support systems. With increased population, urbanization, and change in lifestyles and dietary systems, we are increasing resource footprints, which are expressed in terms such as water footprint (Chapagain and Hoekstra 2004), ecological footprint (Walther et al. 2005), and energy footprint and/or carbon footprint (Sovacool and Brown 2010; Pradhan et al. 2013; Pradhan and Kropp 2020). Our actions are exerting more stress on the Earth’s natural resources and the Earth has its own planetary boundaries (Steffen et al. 2015). Therefore, for addressing the sustainable development challenges, we need coordinated actions at global, regional, and local levels under various sectors, in particular, water and climate change.

Understanding the aforementioned needs and efforts to that end itself is not new. The Stockholm Convention in 1972 is the first international conference on environmental issues which became a turning point for international environmental politics (Table 1.1). The United Nations Conference on Water held in Mar del Plata, Argentina in 1977 is of significance in the water and environment sector as it approved the Mar del Plata Action Plan, which was the first internationally coordinated approach to the integrated water resources management (IWRM) (Biswas 2004). Since then, a number of notable global commitments and initiatives were agreed and implemented as the global goals. They include but not limited to Agenda 21 and Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) which was agreed on the 1st Earth Summit held in Rio de Janerio in 1992; establishment of intergovernmental institutions such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established jointly by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 1988; Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions agreed in 1997 and came into effect from 2005; Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agreed in the UN Millennium Summit in 2000; establishment of Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in 2012; Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA, 2005) for building resilience of nations and communities, Sendai Framework on Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR 2015); 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed in 2015 by the UN General Assembly; and Paris Agreement adopted by the parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in COP21, held in 2015 in Paris (Table 1.1), as the post‐Kyoto Protocol measures for dealing with greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, adaptation, and finance; among others.

Of the most recent set of global commitments, Paris Climate Agreement (PCA) and SDGs are highly interconnected to each other and comprehensively cover major domains of sustainability, particularly water sharing, in both breadth and depth (Dzebo et al. 2019). For example, impacts of climate change to various sectors are primarily manifested thorough water and achieving SDGs are hinged at securing

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