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The German people responded generously to the tsunami catastrophe and proved their willingness to provide spontaneous help to the victims. Many water suppliers and municipalities have also offered their own proposals. The German Federal Environment Ministry wishes to build on this willingness and launched a project to investigate the opportunities available for a long term, professional commitment of the German civil society in the area of water provision and sanitation. The project team conducted interviews of experts and stakeholders from the water sector, the area of development policy and of academia, who then met in a workshop to discuss the results. The workshop documentation is available for download.

1,1 Billion people have no access to safe drinking water. As a reaction to this, world leaders agreed in 2000 on Millennium Development Goals which set the target to halve the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015. It is important to find out which role the German civil society can play to reach this target.

The project team conducted preliminary research to map as comprehensively as possible the spectrum of potential actions and organisational frameworks which could support the commitment of civil society in the water sector. Interviews with relevant stakeholders formed the main component of this research.

The research aimed at providing a sound, up-to-date overview of the interests and conceptions of employees, businesses and municipalities (as suppliers of water and sanitation), as well as water experts and academics. This overview served as a basis for a common discussion during a workshop. It is essential to find out which opportunities and, as the case may be, which concerns may exist regarding a stronger involvement of the German civil society to improve the provision of drinking water and sanitation in developing countries.

On behalf of the German Federal Environmental Ministry, the workshop "Building up local water partnerships" took place on 23 November 2005 in Bonn. Supported by RegioWasser, Freiburg, Ecologic organised the event in co-operation with the InWEnt – Service Agency Partnership Initiative, Bonn.

Under the professional moderation of Dr. Frank Claus, iku GmbH, Dortmund, around 40 participants from the water and development cooperation sectors was given the opportunity to learn about examples of local water partnerships and to discuss questions related to benefits, risks and framework conditions in the area of development assistance for water and sanitation projects.

Participants came together in different working groups in a so-called "world café set-up", which allowed for the open exchange of experiences and ideas on specific issues as regards local water partnerships.

The documentation [pdf, 3.6 MB, German] including the workshop’s and working groups’ results is now available and can be downloaded.