UN-Water GEMI: Monitoring Target 6.4 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

In September 2015, heads of state from all around the world gathered in New York to adopt the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious plan of action for people, planet and prosperity, comprised of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). It includes a dedicated goal on water and sanitation (SDG 6) that sets out to "ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all".

The UN-Water Integrated Monitoring Initiative for SDG 6 represents a collaboration among United Nations agencies to support countries to monitor water and sanitation across sectors and to compile data to report on global progress. The Initiative includes the work of JMP, GEMI and GLAAS.

JMP and GLAAS were already tracking progress for drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (SDG targets 6.1 and 6.2, and part of 6.a and 6.b), but the many initiatives that monitored different aspects of the management of water, wastewater and ecosystem resources (SDG targets 6.3 to 6.6) lacked a coherent global mechanism. To meet this need, GEMI was established in 2014 as an inter-agency initiative composed of FAO, UNECE, UN Environment, UN-Habitat, UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and WMO.

GEMI’s focus is to integrate and expand existing monitoring efforts on wastewater treatment and water quality (6.3.2), water use (6.4.1) and scarcity (6.4.2), integrated water resources management (6.5.1) including transboundary cooperation (6.5.2) and water-related ecosystems (6.6.1). Since these indicators are new at the global scale, they are associated with a great need for awareness raising and capacity building at all levels.

• Integrate and expand existing monitoring efforts, to ensure harmonised monitoring of the entire water cycle
• Provide member states with a monitoring guide for SDG targets 6.3-6.6
• Engage member states and enhance their capacity in water sector monitoring
• Report on global progress towards SDG targets 6.3-6.6

As a partner of the GEMI initiative, FAO is the custodian agency for the monitoring of SDG Target 6.4 that aims at: "By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity". Two indicators were formulated to monitor this target:

• 6.4.1: Change in water-use efficiency over time
• 6.4.2: Level of water stress: freshwater withdrawal in percentage of available freshwater resources.

The monitoring of Target 6.4 relies largely on the data, the guidelines and the methodologies developed and provided by AQUASTAT.

Moreover, while WHO and UN-Habitat are the custodian agencies for Target 6.3, also that target relies largely on AQUASTAT data, especially with regards to wastewater production, collection, treatment, use and discharge.

Information, including methodological aspects related to the indicators of Target 6.4 for which FAO is the custodian agency can be found at the dedicated website.

More information on GEMI can be found in the Integrated monitoring initiative for SDG 6 web page.