Inclusive basin partnerships: Transforming water security across regions

On 26 August 2026,  NWP co-convened a session at Stockholm World Water Week 2026 on this topic with its NoWNET partners and others. The session united global experts, policymakers, and practitioners to address one of the most urgent water-related challenges of our time.

With thanks to reporter Yumiko Asayama, Chief Manager at Japan Water Forum, we are happy to present the report she drafted of the session entitled ‘Inclusive Basin Partnerships: Transforming Water Security Across Regions’ to our readers.

Session overview

Drawing on seven case studies from Africa, Asia, and Europe, the session examined how multi-stakeholder partnerships, science-based decision-making, innovative financing, digital technologies, and inclusive governance can advance basin-scale solutions.

Building on the seven presentations, the panel discussion explored what makes basin partnerships successful, sustainable, and locally owned across diverse contexts. It further considered how successful approaches can be learned, adapted, and scaled, and how partnerships can be strengthened to turn shared challenges into collective solutions.

Overall, the session sought to move beyond individual examples to identify common principles, enabling conditions, and practical approaches to strengthen and scale inclusive partnerships and translate them into lasting basin-level action.

Co-conveners were DHI, French Water Partnership, French Youth Parliament for Water, Japan Water Forum, Northern Water Network, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) Asia, Suntory, Yachiyo Engineering, and Water Risk Lab.

Key lessons from the case presentations

Cases from Asia     

SUMERNET / MTT (Mekong Region)
By Chayanis Krittasudthacheewa, Partnership and Engagement for Impact Director, SEI Asia
Building trust-based, long-term networks and sustaining dialogue are essential to translating knowledge into collective action. Rather than relying on one-off projects or knowledge transfer, cross-border collaboration can be fostered through co-creation, mutual learning, and sustained relationship building.

Groundwater Conservation in Kumamoto
By Harumichi Seta, Senior General Manager/Climate & Nature Lead, Sustainability Management Division, Suntory Holdings Ltd.
Scaling up local initiatives requires collaboration among government agencies, industry, academia, finance bodies, and local communities, and be supported by standardisation, data, and financial incentives. Rather than replicating the Kumamoto water stewardship model as is, it should be used as a ‘living model’ that can be adapted to each region’s context.

Partnerships often end after the pilot stage, not because the money runs out, but because demand does not grow. Only the public sector can turn a standard into a requirement – which is why the private sector players must build the standard and collect the evidence and present them to the government.

Higashi Omi City / Echi River Basin
By Hirohito Yoshida, Deputy General Manager, Sustainability Services Division, Yachiyo Engineering Co. Ltd.
It is important to view the river basin not only as a unit of ecosystem management, but also as a unit of investment and collective action. Connecting local knowledge and values to science, policy, and finance, and combining long-term financing mechanisms with monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), can help make local initiatives sustainable over the long term.

Cases from Europe

Youth Engagement (France/Transboundary Basins)
By Guillaume Février, Vice President, French Youth Parliament for Water
Moving youth participation beyond consultation and toward meaningful, sustained engagement in decision-making is important. Combining institutional opportunities for participation, such as voting rights, with practical engagement in activities such as river restoration and citizen science can strengthen trust, legitimacy, and long-term commitment. Youth integration in French river basins’ governing bodies offers replicable examples of how young people can meaningfully contribute to national and transboundary water governance.

DANUBE4all (Danube River Basin)
By Gergana Majercakova, Global Water Partnership Organisation
For citizen engagement to generate lasting value, mechanisms are needed to recognise local knowledge as evidence and translate it into decision-making. Pilot local innovations and connect them to basin planning, policies, investment, and implementation, then scale them up through networks.

Cases from Africa

Ethiopia: Water Pricing Reform (Awash River Basin)
By Jacob Jan Vreugdenhil, Chief Program Officer, Woord & Daad
Moving from project interventions to system change requires institutional ownership, effective implementation, meaningful participation, and sustained collaboration built on trust. Policy development and pilot results alone are insufficient. Ensuring data sharing, cross-institutional coordination, and meaningful stakeholder influence in decision-making is essential.

Nile River Basin: Digital Solutions
By Abraha Adugna, Deputy Executive Director, Nile Basin Initiative (NBI)
Transforming digital technologies into effective basin governance requires sustained investment, not only in technology but also in data infrastructure, institutions, human capacity, and partnerships. Moving from individual pilots toward integrated systems requires data interoperability, cross-country and cross-sectoral collaboration, and strengthened institutional capacity.

For detailed presentations by each speaker and the full programme, please click here.

Panel discussion summary: Water governance and local ownership

The panel discussion, moderated by NWP Director & Chair Rick Elmendorp, explored the conditions for local ownership and collaboration needed to achieve sustainable basin governance, and drew on experiences from Asia, Europe, Africa, and other regions. The discussion confirmed that while fundamental principles of water governance are broadly applicable across contexts, flexible adaptation to institutional, social, and economic conditions is essential.

Key outcomes and lessons learned from the panel discussion

1. Build local ownership from the outset
Local ownership should not be treated as something to be ‘transferred’ at the end of a project. Rather, it is built by involving local actors throughout the process – from problem identification and priority-setting to planning, implementation, and adaptive improvement.

A strong sense of ownership at the grassroots level, including among farmers and local communities, helps ensure local actors see the challenges, solutions, and processes as their own, thereby strengthening the sustainability of interventions. Make meaningful roles and opportunities to participate in decision-making available to diverse stakeholders, including youth and civil society organisations (CSOs), rather than limiting their involvement to consultation. This enhances both the legitimacy and long-term sustainability of initiatives.

2．Build collaboration on trust, long-term relationships, and networks
In river basins, interests often intersect across upstream and downstream areas, national borders, and sectors. Building relationships based on dialogue, mutual understanding, and trust, rather than assigning blame, is therefore essential.

Moving from project-based relationships to long-term networks, from knowledge sharing to co-creation, and from training to mutual learning can foster sustained collaboration and continuous learning across regions.

3． Co-create science, data, and local knowledge, and connect them to decision-making
It is important to combine scientific data, local knowledge and experience, and citizen science to co-create evidence that can establish a shared understanding of water-related challenges. This requires foundations for cross-border and cross-sectoral data sharing, interoperability, standardisation, and MRV, as well as clear pathways for translating knowledge and evidence into policy, planning, investment, and implementation.

4．Establish an enabling environment through institutions and organisations
To move collaboration beyond individual projects, an institutional and organisational environment that enables long-term cooperation is essential. This includes basin organisations, regional networks, youth, and CSOs. In particular, policy reforms should be linked to implementation arrangements, inter-institutional coordination, and data sharing. Governments also have an important orchestration role in connecting diverse initiatives, avoiding duplication, and coordinating efforts.

5．Adapt and scale successful approaches to local contexts rather than simply replicating them
Successful approaches cannot simply be ‘copied and pasted’ from one context to another. Instead, common principles – including trust-building, inclusive participation, knowledge sharing, and connections between science and policy – need to be adapted to the specific context of each region/basin through continuous cycles of implementation and learning.

International networks and exchanges can facilitate mutual learning, while connecting locally generated evidence to policy, institutions, investment, and implementation can help scale local practices.

6．Create demand and systems for sustainable financing
To prevent initiatives from ending with individual projects, mechanisms are needed to make the value of water, ecosystem services, and related benefits more visible and measurable, and to generate sustained demand and financial flows through policy and markets. This may include a combination of credits, private investment, public-private partnerships, co-financing, matchmaking with funders, and aggregation and investment-readiness of projects into viable pipelines, alongside public policies, regulations, and incentives that create demand for such investments.

Overall conclusion

The panel shared a common understanding that sustainable basin governance cannot be achieved through a single institution or technology. It requires connecting diverse stakeholders, knowledge, institutions, networks, and financing around local ownership to foster sustained collaboration and learning.

A key priority is therefore to establish catalytic mechanisms that connect locally driven practices with trust and networks, knowledge and evidence, institutions and policy, and sustainable finance and markets. These mechanisms can help adapt and scale local practices to different contexts, enabling individual project outcomes to evolve into basin-level action and, ultimately, broader systemic change.

Th partnership-based approach advocated during the session is also at the heart of NoWNET, the Northern Water Network, which promotes knowledge exchange, multi-stakeholder collaboration, North-South cooperation, and collective action across regions.

Also on behalf of the NoWNET partners, NWP would like thank all the speakers for their active engagement and sharing their experience. Also thanks to the organisers of Stockholm World Water Week for enabling this valuable platform and facilitating the discussions.

World Water Week 2026 Impact report

Stockholm World Water Week is about more than conversations. It is about sharing knowledge, building connections and advancing solutions to global water challenges. The 2026 Impact Report explores what this looks like in practice. Read the report to find out:

• how diverse global participation shapes the Week;
• what participants took away in terms of knowledge and new perspectives;
• how World Water Week supports learning & innovation; and,
• how we carry knowledge forward to COP31 and the UN Water Conference.

Download the report here.

Stockholm World Water Week on YouTube
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