UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS and Coca-Cola announced a $6 million partnership agreement to cooperate on improving access to safe drinking water and other water projects in the region.

The joint project was announced in Vienna at a conference on responsible investing in Eastern Europe and the CIS organized by UNDP, Austrian Development Cooperation and UNIDO.

The five-year partnership between RBEC and the Coca-Cola Company's Europe and Middle East Division will initially focus on projects in Turkey, Kazakhstan, Romania and Croatia to improve rural communities' access to safe drinking water, as well as on industrial water use along the Danube River and providing advocacy on water issues in the region.

The partnership illustrates just one of the many ways the private sector can be involved in finding solutions to public issues, said Kalman Mizsei, UN Assistant Secretary General and Regional Director for UNDP's Bureau for Europe and the CIS, at the press conference in Vienna.

"Partnership with the private sector is essential as a lot of the skills and human capacity needed to solve public problems actually sit in the private sector and in private enterprises," said Mizsei. "Without the private sector involved, we cannot hope to solve these problems of public concern."

Water resources are critical for economic development in the region, for consumption, sanitation, irrigation, industrial use, transportation, fishing and aquaculture and recreation. But many aquatic ecosystems in Europe and the CIS have suffered serious degradation or are under threat -from pollution, over-harvesting of surface and groundwater, invasive species, and habitat loss- and achieving a balance between the water demands of communities and the needs of the aquatic ecosystems on which they depend remains a key challenge.

Vienna Forum: Responsible business is good business

Corporate social responsibility is more than just philanthropy - it makes clear commercial sense, heard delegates at a UNDP sponsored conference on responsible investing in Southeast Europe, the EU member states and the CIS.

Some 200 representatives from the private sector and the international development community met in Vienna on 19 June for a two-day meeting to explore ways of bringing together the international development agenda and business opportunities in the region.

The conference is organized by the Austrian Development Cooperation, UNDP, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in association with the UN Global Compact Office, the Government of Belgium, respACT Austria, the US Chamber of Commerce - Business Civic Leadership Centre and the Centre for International Private Enterprise.

Participants discussed issues of corporate governance and community investment projects, and heard presentations on cross-sectoral partnerships in action.

"Partnership with the private sector is essential as a lot of the skills and human capacity needed to solve public problems actually sit in the private sector and in private enterprises," said Kalman Mizsei. "Without the private sector involved, we cannot hope to solve these problems of public concern."

UNDP is working closely with businesses in the region on a range of development projects. In Kazakhstan, Chevron Texaco, Citibank and UNDP have formed a partnership to promote small- and medium-sized enterprise development. In Poland the oil refinery PKN has teamed up with Levi Strauss, the local government and UNDP in order to fund projects promoting sustainable development. And Polish Telecom is promoting the use of Internet in disadvantaged rural communities together with UNDP.