Water Governance in Europe & CIS

The joint project was announced in Vienna at a conference on responsible investing in Eastern Europe and the CIS organized by UNDP, Austrian Development Cooperation and UNIDO.

 

The five-year partnership between RBEC and the Coca-Cola Company's Europe and Middle East Division will initially focus on projects in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Romania and Croatia to improve rural communities’ access to safe drinking water, as well as on industrial water use along the Danube River and providing advocacy on water issues in the region.

The partnership illustrates just one of the many ways the private sector can be involved in finding solutions to public issues, said Kalman Mizsei, UN Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director for UNDP’s Bureau for Europe and the CIS, at the press conference in Vienna.

“Partnership with the private sector is essential as a lot of the skills and human capacity needed to solve public problems actually sit in the private sector and in private enterprises,” said Mr.Mizsei. “Without the private sector involved, we cannot hope to solve these problems of public concern.”

Water resources are critical for economic development in the region, for consumption, sanitation, irrigation, industrial use, transportation, fishing and aquaculture and recreation. But many aquatic ecosystems in Europe and the CIS have suffered serious degradation or are under threat - from pollution, over-harvesting of surface and groundwater, invasive species, and habitat loss - and achieving a balance between the water demands of communities and the needs of the aquatic ecosystems on which they depend remains a key challenge.

For further information please contact:
Zoran Stevanovic
Regional Communications Specialist
+ 421-2-59-337-428
zoran.stevanovic@undp.org

Denisa Papayova
Communications Associate
+ 421-2-59-337-162
denisa.papayova@undp.org

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