International cooperation has become more and more important in the everyday activities of regional water authorities. This has to do with the growing relevance of factors like globalisation, climate change, corporate social responsibility and global goals for development and poverty reduction.

Waterschap Hunze en Aa’s is one of the many regional water authorities that undertake international activities. Many of those international initiatives have received financial support by the European Union (EU). This enabled us to execute regional projects with lower costs and to profit from a large amount of knowledge sharing. Apart from these aspects, we attach value to some more idealistic motives. In particular, we think it is important that our specific knowledge does not remain within the organisation but also reaches those areas in the world where knowledge of water management is in great demand. That is why we have committed ourselves to two knowledge sharing projects in Romania. One of these projects is still running and focuses on the whole water chain, from flood protection to drinking water and sanitation. Furthermore, from the autumn of 2010 Hunze en Aa’s will be involved in some activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where it will strive for the improvement of the water quality and the growing of local governmental and societal support for nature and the environment.

Waterschap Hunze en Aa’s has the following main motives for its involvement in international cooperation:

• The benefits of knowledge sharing. We can learn a lot from our international activities. EU-funded projects usually result in the sharing of specific knowledge on water management, whilst  our projects based on more idealistic motives lead to understanding of cultural issues and the ways of thinking as well as the working methods of foreign partners.
• Regional projects accomplished with the financial support of the EU lead to a substantial cost reduction for our organisation.
• Hunze en Aa’s wishes to contribute to the principles of corporate social responsibility. Because of the process of globalisation that is still taking place in many domains, our social role has changed. We would like to respond to this change. We already participate in activities related to corporate social responsibility by providing assistance on water management problems in Romania.
• Hunze en Aa’s wishes to contribute to the issues of drinking water and sanitation as determined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s) of the United Nations. By means of the so-called ‘Schokland Agreement’, all Dutch regional water authorities committed themselves to active involvement in these issues, which are formulated in MDG number 7.
• Hunze en Aa’s aims at bearing in mind the indicators on international cooperation as defined by the national government and the Dutch Association of Regional Water Authorities (‘Unie van Waterschappen’). Both organisations have a positive vision on an appropriate and effective contribution to international activities by the Dutch regional water authorities and even try to encourage such international action.

Regarding the international projects undertaken by Hunze en Aa’s, the following principles are important:

At the moment, Hunze en Aa’s is involved in five different international projects. For more information on these initiatives, please see the following links: