We need actions and solutions that drive the change we need

− Improving the governance of water is an urgent priority for all of humankind

By Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands and Sulton Rahimzoda, Special Envoy of the President of Tajikistan for Water and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea

This month the United Nations will hold its first water conference in almost 50 years. This is not only a unique opportunity for the world to come together and accelerate and scale our collective action achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 and all other water-related goals and targets. It is perhaps our last chance to get the world on track for a water-secure world for all, everywhere.

Why water, why now? For the past five decades we have been noisily going about the business of rapid growth and development. Water was always available, and its quality and its supply were understood as predictable. This allowed us to raise families, build cities and factories, prevent the spread of disease, boost farm yields and bring more land under cultivation.

Since the 1970s, the world’s population has doubled to 8 billion. Coupled with economic development and changing consumption patterns, this has meant the demand for water is skyrocketing. But as we continue to over-deplete, mismanage and abuse this vital resource, it is becoming more scarce, more polluted and contested at an unprecedented rate and scale.

Water insecurity, its rising temperature, impoverished quality and declining availability is making climate change worse: freshwater security is our best bet to curb climate change and keep it within the agreed upon limits. But as global warming takes effect, ordinary weather is becoming a thing of the past, exacerbating the water crisis. Wind and rainfall conditions have become more extreme and harder to predict. This is affecting water’s availability and supply. For example, climate change is distorting India’s monsoon season, causing ice in Tibet to melt and affecting freshwater supplies to more than a billion people.^[1] Increasingly, in many parts of the world, demand for water is more and more nudging above the limits of water availability.

Fuel for life

The World Meteorological Organization estimates that 3.6 billion people struggle to get enough water for their needs at least one month a year, and it has forecast that 5 billion – more than half of humanity – will be facing the same plight by 2050.^[2]

And it’s not just about getting enough to drink, wash or water crops. Extreme weather events sometimes bring too much water all at once. Floods, hurricanes and other water-related events take lives and destroy homes, livelihoods and infrastructure. UN-Water, which coordinates efforts by UN agencies on this issue, reckons that between 2001 and 2018, almost three-quarters of all natural disasters were water-related.^[3]

If the problem is increasingly too little water, at other times we have too much of it, partly because we haven’t adjusted our thinking in response to the growing unpredictability of rainfall and growing competition for a commodity in short supply.

To prevent disasters, we need to build more resilient – green and blue – infrastructure, backed by laws that keep people from building in newly-vulnerable areas, for example.

And to prevent thirst, we need to rethink our economic approach. Water is, after all, a common good, and the water cycle a global common good. When it falls from the sky it is free. But getting it to where it is needed, at the right quality and in sufficient volumes, costs money. Governance – decisions about who gets what – is ultimately in the hands of governments, but tends to be hugely fragmented, sometimes conflictual and enmeshed in historic rights.

An increasingly urgent priority

Competition for water can readily become a source of tension, and even conflict, whether between countries or cities on a common river system, between herders and farmers, or between farmers and city-dwellers. Climate change doesn’t just create floods and droughts or increase demand on artesian water reserves. It can increase levels of pollution, putting health at risk and creating clean-up costs.

This is an issue that concerns rich and poor alike. Achieving access to water and sanitation for all is the ambition of SDG 6. Make no mistake: achieving many of the SDGs, such as ending hunger and poverty, depends upon access to water. Climate change is making better governance of water an urgent priority.

How can we best allocate and value common goods? Equally, how should we share the cost of preventing or mitigating droughts and floods exacerbated by global warming?

These questions are about equity and fairness as much as they are about economics and adapting to climate change. We need some clear thinking about how to improve the governance of water supplies to ensure everyone has access to water to drink and wash. How can we ensure our regulation of distribution is effective, fair, just and has democratic oversight? How can we share the cost of preventing disasters?

This month’s UN Water Conference, therefore, comes not a day too early. We need actions and solutions that drive the change we need, that we can scale and replicate across the world. Therefore, we do not need a Conference with bold statements. We need a Conference with bold commitments. And the boldness to put these commitments into action. To that end, we launched the Water Action Agenda (WAA) – a platform that validates, evaluates, helps scale and replicate these transformative commitments. We call on the world community to join the conference with compelling, transformative, and innovative commitments to drive and accelerate the change needed for all.

And to change, we need to get the economics of water right. The report by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water^[4] to be presented during the Conference should provide fresh, sorely needed ideas and perspectives about how to achieve better water governance and speed up actions across the world.

The conference must provide a roadmap for countries, sectors and river basins seeking better outcomes for all, on all water related challenges, for accelerating the delivery of the SDGs. Water presents us with our best opportunity to do so, if we radically change the way we understand, value and manage water.  This is a topic none of us can afford to ignore. For water is, after all, the very wellspring of life on Earth.

Water as a source of our life deserves to be highly respected, valued, and praised. Let’s be united for water action in New York in March and beyond!

* The views expressed in this blog are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of UN DESA.

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[1] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/new-economics-and-governance-of-water-by-mariana-mazzucato-et-al-2022-09
[2] https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/state-of-global-water-resources-report-informs-rivers-land-water-storage-and    
[3] Ibid.
[4] https://watercommission.org/