UN Water Conference on — Global Water Crisis

The Conference comes just two days after the launch of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body dedicated to evaluating climate science, 2023 report.

“Act now”

As underlined by IPCC Chair Hoesung Lee, the report “underscores the urgency of taking more ambitious action and shows that, if we act now, we can still secure a liveable sustainable future for all.”

However, the latest data highlighted by the United Nations show that half of humanity, 3.6 billion of people, live “without safely managed sanitation,” while one in three people, that is 2.3 billion, “lack basic handwashing facilities at home.”

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, remarked how the Water Conference must “result in a bold Water Action Agenda that gives our world’s lifeblood the commitment it deserves.”

The Agenda will serve as the propulsor to accelerate progress and commitment in the second half of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Specifically, its sixth goal, aims at ensuring “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Interactive Dialogues

Parallel to the Plenary sessions, the Conference will feature five Interactive Dialogues on the five main themes agreed upon by Member States at the Preparatory Meeting, which took place in October 2022: Water for Health, Water for Sustainable Development, Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment, Water for Cooperation, and Water Action Decade.

During the first day of the Conference, the focus will be on equalitarian access to drinking water sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and the role of water in sustainable economic and urban development.

This latter follows up on the WHO and UNICEF joint monitoring program for “water supply, sanitation, and hygiene,” which underlined how “eight out of ten people who lack even basic drinking water service live in rural areas, and about half of them live in least developed countries.”