6 - SDG 6: Ensure Availability and Sustainable Management of Water and Sanitation for All

This chapter reviews the role of Agenda 2030 in further developing water law. It concludes that Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, Clean Water and Sanitation, is a step forward in recognizing the holistic nature of water but that it does not define water as a public good or common good/concern or heritage and also does not reflect on whether water limits require us to redefine growth. It goes beyond a sectoral approach to promote an urgent, coherent, systemic, and multi-level story rightly ignoring whether some of it is based on soft or hard (inter)national law. However, SDG 6 moves backward from limited sovereignty to emphasize full permanent sovereignty over natural resources, and while it emphasizes access to water and sanitation, it does not address the larger distributive issues on which, for example, the 1997 Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of Transboundary Watercourses elaborates. Finally, the implementation of SDG 6 may undermine its lofty goals by engaging the profit-oriented private sector in service delivery to the poorest and by enabling the commodification and privatization of the water.