Target 6.a: International cooperation on water
By 2030, expand international cooperation and capacity-building support to developing countries in water- and sanitation-related activities and programmes, including water harvesting, desalination, water efficiency, wastewater treatment, recycling and reuse technologies
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
International cooperation and capacity building for water and sanitation is a donor-government function, and water in the developing world has historically been funded through public and concessional money. The UN-Water portal records $9.6 billion of water- and sanitation-related official development assistance in 2024, with Sub-Saharan Africa receiving about $2.8 billion. Corporations touch the target as the engineering, desalination, treatment and water-technology firms that deliver projects and transfer know-how. They also touch it as the banks the World Bank hopes will bridge the financing gap through blended finance. If those firms and lenders made technology transfer and concessional water finance a core objective and lobbied their home governments for water aid, the flow of support would grow at the margin. The aid budgets, bilateral agreements and recipient-country capacity that make up the bulk of the outcome remain governmental. Owners help at the margin rather than supplying a necessary input.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
No shareholder advocacy found yet
We looked and found nothing that met our standard, which is a source we opened and confirmed. No shareholder advocacy located on technology transfer, concessional water finance, or corporate support for water and sanitation official development assistance. The Ceres Valuing Water Finance Initiative asks companies about their own value chain rather than about financing or capacity building in developing countries, so it does not fit this target. Advocacy for larger aid budgets is directed at governments, which the brief excludes.
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.