The global implementation of SDG 6 monitoring will be multi-phased and initially focusses on establishing a global baseline for the 11 global indicators under SDG 6. For the first phase in 2017, UN-Water has invited approximately 50 countries to participate, to be followed by further phases to reach global coverage.

It is foreseen that this first set of countries would produce baseline data by September 2017. The baseline data will feed into the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018 and the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development’s in-depth review of SDG 6 in 2018.

Countries have been invited to the process via an official letter from UN-Water to their Permanent Missions in Geneva, and the process to September 2017 (and beyond) can be found here.

Of course, in order to start collecting the baseline data, the methodologies for measuring the SDG6 indicators have been revised, and are now finished and available here.

The inception webinars have started last week, and were joined by Kees Baas (Statistical Bureau of the Netherlands) and Ronald van Dokkum (Rijkswaterstaat, coordinator for the monitoring of SDG6 in the Netherlands).