The GWP immediate objective is to ensure that Integrated Water Resources Management is applied in a growing number of countries and regions, as a means to foster equitable and efficient management and sustainable use of water.

GWP intends to pursue this agenda with realism and persistence. IWRM is not a science, and blueprint solutions for managing water resources will never be available. The Dublin conference in 1992 was seminal in introducing key guiding principles. Operationalizing these principles has proved difficult and highly dependent on the contexts encountered.

One of the ongoing challenges for GWP is to communicate beyond the water community. Adding perspectives certainly brings complexity, not least by forcing a refined analysis of the incentives for changes of a variety of new actors – it is nevertheless, the only way for building real communities for change and improvement. GWP is about IWRM and partnerships. A process of change and a way of working based of commonality of goals, respect and pluralism.