ECLAC participates in the Virtual Workshop "Gender approach and comprehensive management of water resources" aimed at strengthening the existing Cooperation Alliance between agencies of the European Union (EU) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)

Between November 21st and December 5th, the Virtual Workshop "Gender approach and comprehensive management of water resources" is taking place, provided by UN Women Argentina and ECLAC, and coordinated by Fundación León. This has been addressed exclusively to representatives and technical teams of the EU-LAC Triangular Cooperation Alliance (Fundación León, Fondazione AVSI, AVSI México AC, the Secretary of International Relations of Tucumán and the University of Bologna). In the first two meetings, held in virtual format, around 30 people participated.

At the second meeting, which took place on November 28th, ECLAC, through the Natural Resources Division, presented its report "Water challenges in Chile and recommendations for compliance with SDG 6 in Latin America and the Caribbean". The consultant Elisa Blanco from the Water and Energy Unit, who was in charge of the presentation, emphasized the compliance with the SDG 6 goals in the Latin American and Caribbean region, presenting data at the regional level, taking into account social, economic and environmental dimensions under analysis, and comparing them with world trends. Likewise, the consultant reviewed the most critical challenges in the provision of drinking water and sanitation in the region, such as climate change and governance challenges. Thus, to overcome these challenges and accelerate compliance with SDG 6, the importance of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) was highlighted and the long road to travel to achieve the effective implementation of IWRM in the region was presented.

In addition, after the presentation of the regional panorama, ECLAC presented its vision regarding water as a central vector for sustainable development and made a proposal for a sustainable and inclusive water transition for the region. This proposal has as its starting point the global acceleration framework of SDG 6, which is based on five pillars - financing, data and information, capacity development, innovation and governance.

Thus, through its presentation, ECLAC contributed to the objective of the workshop to initiate a reflection aimed at identifying good practices, lessons learned, tools, methodologies and strategies to address the issue of the use of water resources, also considering the relationship between inequality gender and climate crisis as one of the great current challenges.