TEHRAN — Following Tajikistan’s initiative regarding water-related issues the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development”, 2018-2028.

The initiative first came from Tajik President Emomali Rahmon during the 7th World Water Forum in the Republic of Korea on April 12, 2015.

Tajik ambassador to Iran Nematullo Emomzoda made the announcement at a press conference held in the Embassy of the Republic of Tajikistan here on Tuesday.

Adopted on Dec. 21, 2016 the resolution was backed by 177 UN member states. The newly approved resolution is a continuation of the 2005 to 2015 International Decade for Action “Water for Life”.

According to United Nations website the goal during the Water for Life Decade was to promote efforts to fulfill international commitments in the water sphere by 2015. Trying to raise the profile of water in the global agenda, and to focus the world’s attention on the groundbreaking, lifesaving, empowering work done by those implementing water programs and projects, being a bridge to further cooperation between governments and other stakeholders, between nations and diverse communities, between economic interests and the needs of ecosystems and the poor, and promoting efforts to ensure the participation of women in water and sanitation are some of the goals the UN tried to achieve during the first decade.

“The modern global challenges and threats including financial and economic crises, population growth, climate change, increase of natural hydro-meteorological phenomena, water scarcity and as a result increasing level of poverty, spread of infectious diseases and maternal mortality” urges more actions and measures to tackle water-related issues, said Tajik President Rahmon during the 7th World Water Forum in the Republic of Korea.

Therefore, Rahmon suggested the continuation of the Water for Life Decade in an attempt to create a stable framework for coordination and promotion of efforts to address the challenges related to water management issues.

The Water for Sustainable Development Decade which will initiate on March 22, 2018 concurrent with World Water Day will cover following goals:

Sustainable development and integrated management of water resources for the achievement of social, economic, and environmental goals

Furtherance of cooperation and partnership at all levels in order to help to achieve internationally agreed water-related goals and targets including those contained in sustainable development goals

Implementation and promotion of related program and projects

Improving the knowledge of the generation and dissemination, facilitating access to knowledge and exchange of good practices, generating new information relevant to the water-related sustainable development goal

Perusing advocacy, networking and promoting partnership and action by different actors to implement the water-related goals and targets

Strengthening the communication actions at various levels for the implementation of the water-related goals

The evaluation of the decade implementation process in the framework of the 77th session of the UN is expected.

MQ/MG