A waterway to resilience FY15 annual report

The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is an ambitious step toward poverty eradication in all its forms. These global goals aim to shift the world onto a sustainable and resilient path by 2030, a journey we will collectively take towards protecting the dignity and equality of each person. To get there, we need to expand our funding from billions to trillions, leveraging every grant dollar to crowd in public and private investment. The World Bank Group (WBG) is eager to be a major driver and implementer of this agenda in its client countries. Water permeates much of the SDG agenda, from sustainable services to enhanced agricultural productivity and more resilient cities. Water is a short term and a long-term risk to global growth. Whether in shortage or excess, water variability presents new challenges, and as each year passes, new pressures emerge. In many of the poorest countries, a changing climate and changing demographics have compounded, leaving more people more vulnerable to more frequent extremes. The World Bank’s Water Global Practice (WGP) was established in 2014 to confront this complexity. Based on the tenant that water security should be everyone’s business, the WGP decided to move beyond the traditional lens to embrace Water Writ Large, linking improved water management and the services it delivers as an input to achieving the SDGs in other sectors. This new approach requires a coalition of traditionally disparate disciplines around a common goal, a water, secure world that balances the demands of various water users, while ensuring that no one is left behind. The WGP is endowed with the Water Partnership Program (WPP) as a critical tool for implementing this philosophy. The WPP has allowed us to shape global water policy through partnerships with innovators, which informs our investments and provides us with the tools we need to anticipate the needs of the future. By combining analysis, capacity building and knowledge exchange in one platform, the WPP positions the WGP to tackle complex water issues by taking global knowledge to the local context.