Transboundary water cooperation is necessary to manage shared waters in an integrated and sustainable way. It has the potential to generate many significant benefits for cooperating countries, such as accelerated economic growth, improved human well-being, enhanced environmental sustainability and increased political stability. Nevertheless, many challenges can prevent or delay countries from embracing effective joint management of transboundary waters, including because of an incomplete or biased perception of the benefits that could be attained.
The workshop brought together more than 80 participants representing more than 40 countries as well as organizations from all over the world working on transboundary water cooperation to discuss how the identification, assessment and communication of the broad range of benefits generated by transboundary water cooperation can prompt, support or strengthen cooperation in transboundary basins.
It provided a platform to share experiences, good practices, challenges faced and lessons learnt from transboundary basins where work has been carried out to better understand, analyze and communicate the benefits of transboundary water cooperation as well as the cost of inaction, but also transboundary basins where development had been guided by common benefits/ benefit sharing arrangements.
The workshop was organized under the leadership of the Governments of Estonia and Serbia, with the support of the Water Convention secretariat, serviced by UNECE. Funding for the workshop was provided by the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Resources of the Netherlands and the Geneva Water Hub.
News article: Moving forward transboundary water cooperation: Building on its benefits
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