Global Water Partnership - GWP

Moving towards integrated water resources management in Paraguay

The support of GWP South America played a key role in achieving significant progress towards integrated water resources management in Paraguay in 2022. In May, after 15 years of work, the country enacted its Water Resources Law and in December it launched its Action Plan for IWRM.

GWP South America provided vital knowledge of integrated management of water resources and climate resilience throughout the development of both instruments. During the drafting of the Water Law, GWP South America collaborated with the government of Paraguay to produce a report on the status of SDG 6.5.1 in the country, looking at the degree to which integrated management of water resources had been implemented.

The Action Plan for IWRM was developed through a consultative process, in which GWP South America was an important partner, providing technical and financial support. The plan establishes a roadmap of prioritised actions that will have a tangible and sustainable impact on the management of water resources and accelerate the implementation of integrated water resources management in Paraguay.

Supporting Peru to achieve its climate goals

Hearing the voices of stakeholders is key when it comes to climate planning. GWP South America helped Peru to do this as the country updated its National Strategy for Climate Change, which focuses on achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. With support from the NDC Partnership, GWP South America provided technical assistance and developed the inputs needed to support a public consultation process, allowing Peruโ€™s Ministry of Environment to gather the views and suggestions of stakeholders. GWP South America also collated all the documents relating to the consultation and updating process.

GWP was also chosen to be the implementing partner for Peru, as part of the NDC Partnership, to help it accelerate the implementation of its Nationally Determined Contributions by strengthening relevant institutions.

Empowering companies to reduce their water footprint

How much water is used to make the products that consumers use? In 2022, GWP South America set out to answer this question through the launch of the Blue Good Practices project in Uruguay. Inspired by similar initiatives in other Latin American countries, the project aimed to gain experience in measuring the water footprints of private sector companies, formulate recommendations to improve the efficiency of water use in production processes, and promote the circular economy and sustainability actions in the industrial sector.

As part of the project, the water footprints of three companies from the cosmetics, paint manufacturing, and metallurgy sectors in Uruguay were measured. The ultimate objective of Blue Good Practices is to empower companies to use water efficiently and generate new ideas for improving water use efficiency.

GWP South America promoted the Blue Good Practices initiative throughout South America. It partnered with the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay (CIU) to host a webinar explaining how the water footprint of companies can be measured using the internationally accepted ISO 14046 methodology. Learning processes are being carried out to understand the constraints of small and medium-sized companies in South America to carry out their water footprint study. It also partnered with the Water Fund for Lima and Callao, and the National Water Authority in Peru to organise a virtual workshop that considered a range of aspects associated with measuring the water footprint of industrial companies.