In a statement by Amb. Munir Akram, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations In-person briefing of member states on the UN 2023 Water Conference.
I begin by thanking my colleague, Ambassador of Tajikistan Jonibek, and Ambassador of the Netherlands Yoka Brandt, for organizing this meeting and for this important and informative briefing with USG Liu, as well as the two special envoys from Tajikistan and the Netherlands.
Pakistan is estimated to be among the top ten water-deficient countries in the world. Due to climate change and other events, we suffer from floods during summer and frequent droughts in winter. Thus, we are concerned that the world remains off-track in the implementation of SDG 6.
I believe that the SDG 6 Global Acceleration Framework, with its five accelerators funding, can provide an appropriate framework for structuring the themes of dialogue with data and information, capacity development, innovation, and governance. These dialogues should be focused and action-oriented as highlighted in our discussion today.
In particular, I would highlight the importance of including water governance issues, including cross-border water cooperation, as one of the topics of conversation.
Cross-border water cooperation plays an important role in supporting comprehensive regional integration, peace, and sustainable development, as well as addressing regional security challenges and climate change adaptation.
Currently, 60 percent of the world’s freshwater runoff is cross-border water. 153 countries have at least one of the 286 trans-boundary river and lake basins and 592 trans-boundary aquifer systems.
With most of the world’s water resources shared between two or more countries, the need for cross-border cooperation increases with increasing water scarcity.
We believe that the three elements that will be most important in relation to our commitments are finance, technology cooperation, and partnerships. This has been mentioned in our discussions so far.
We are glad that you will aim to have an agreement on water and a roadmap for the implementation of that agreement. We hope that the commitments we make with respect to water progressively will be reflected in the national commitments of Member States and reflected in the VNRs we organize annually to review progress on the SDGs, as the SDGs in the 2030 Agenda 6 is an important element.
