UN Water 1977 – And No Bit Wiser?

1977, the First UN Water Conference in Mar del Plata, and its Action Plan. 116 governments treated water (and by extension sanitation) as a global priority for the first time. Easy to forget how new that idea once was.

Why it mattered

The Action Plan’s focus was water resources management and sanitation was a junior cousin to water. Still, it put things on the map the sector still lives with:

• Recognised water as a right for the first time, sowing seed for formal recognition of human right to water and sanitation decades later
• Designated 1981–1990 the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade — the first dedicated global target-setting exercise for the sector, arguably the ancestor of MDGs and SDGs
• Called on countries to establish a dedicated department for water supply and sanitation where none existed. Nearly 50 years on, “who owns sanitation” remains a live question in many contexts

What the Plan proposed

Strikingly systemic for 1977:

• National targets
• Revolving funds blending tariffs, subsidies and loans
• Low-cost technology sized to what rural communities could operate and maintain
• Tiered training, from village technicians to professionals
• Community mobilisation through planning, construction and operation, not just to build
• Wastewater reuse — recycling, dual water systems, joint industrial-domestic treatment — decades before “circular economy” entered our vocabulary

Not everything here was new — polluter-pays, appropriate technology, environmental review all predate 1977. Mar del Plata bundled these into one global agenda, at government level, for the first time.

Where it fell short

The Plan itself was non-binding and top-down: no enforceable targets, left goal setting to individual countries, and gave little role to local communities. The Decade closed in 1990 short of universal coverage, with sanitation lagging water throughout.

Why it still matters

Mar del Plata set in motion a lineage that kept improving: target-setting and monitoring improved with the MDGs adding measurable, dated targets, and the SDGs went further with disaggregated, service-level indicators. But global frameworks still work top-down, sector by sector, city by city — Orangi and Natal remain the reminder that some of the most durable solutions come from the other direction.

𝙒𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝘿𝙂 𝙚𝙧𝙖 𝙣𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙙𝙞𝙨𝙘𝙪𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙙 𝙥𝙤𝙨𝙩-2030 𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙖 𝙨𝙚𝙩 𝙩𝙤 𝙗𝙚𝙜𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙤𝙤𝙣, 𝙞𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙖𝙙𝙙 𝙤𝙣𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙜𝙡𝙤𝙗𝙖𝙡 𝙨𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙩𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙖𝙜𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙖 𝙩𝙤𝙙𝙖𝙮, 𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙬𝙤𝙪𝙡𝙙 𝙞𝙩 𝙗𝙚?