9th World Water Forum Adopts Blue Deal

Dakar Declaration Announced

5 Apr 2022 by The Water Diplomat
DAKAR, Senegal

Abdoulaye Sene
Abdoulaye Sene, Executive Secretary, 9th World Water Forum

On the 25th of March, during the closing ceremony of the 9th World Water Forum (WWF) in Dakar, the Dakar Declaration  was announced, launching a "Blue Deal" on water security for peace and development.

Entitled “A Blue Deal for Water Security for Peace and Development”, the Dakar Declaration contains a set of five principal domains for action developed by stakeholders to respond to current water challenges.

These five domains are:

  • acceleration of the implementation of the rights to water and sanitation
  • ensuring the availability and resilience of water resources
  • ensuring adequate financial resources to invest in water and sanitation
  • ensuring inclusive water governance
  • enhancing cooperation in the domain of water and sanitation.

The Dakar Declaration is intended as a contribution to a broader diplomatic process on water issues that will culminate in the UN Water Conference in New York in March 2023.

The document is intentionally succinct, having been prepared as a basic framework that would allow space for stakeholders to elaborate more detailed road maps for action on individual topics during the course of the Forum.  

A report of the WWF is to be produced in the coming weeks which summarises these action pathways, and this report together with the Dakar Declaration, will inform consultative processes taking place later in the year. These meeting include the second High Level Conference on the International Decade for Action “Water For Sustainable Development” in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and the 27th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.