Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 6 commits the global community to ‘ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’. In response, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) initiated the funding programme ‘Water as a Global Resource’(GRoW), which attracted a great deal of interest. Twelve joint research projects and one networking and transfer project were selected from a large number of applicants. These projects included 90 German partners from science, business and practice with a total of over 300 participants. They worked with research organisations and stakeholders from case-study areas around the world to help implement the projects and transfer research results into policy and practice. This brochure presents selected highlights from the GRoW funding programme. A more comprehensive presentation can be found on the website www.bmbf-grow.de and in the over 200 scientific publications of the projects.