The Salesman and the Preacher: Tracking Dutch Presence at the 2023 UN Water Conference

I set myself an idiosyncratic task for the UN Water Conference: to figure out what the Dutch were up to. Along with their unlikely sidekick, the country of Tajikistan, the Netherlands was the co-host of this second ever, and shall we say, irregular UN Water Conference. Representatives from Dutch government, municipalities, businesses and engineering firms, water district authorities, NGOs, universities and research institutes flooded the halls and side events. There was a strong showing too from the Dutch Caribbean—certainly more than from any other SIDS. Not only did I develop a knack for attending the same side events as King Willem-Alexander—I “ran into him” three times—I also bumped into Aniek Moonen , leader of the Dutch youth climate movement. The Dutch were everywhere.

By the end of the conference, I came to a surprising realization: But for the Dutch there wouldn’t have been a second UN Water Conference. Let’s be more precise. But for Henk Ovink , the Royal Dutch Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, the conference probably would not have taken place. After two three-year terms as envoy, his second term was extended by two years so that he could organize the conference. He brought all his missionary zeal, his global rolodex, and his persuasive powers to bear. The UN Water Conference was, you could say, the pinnacle of his efforts to date to put water front and center on the world’s agenda. An astounding mobilization of people and institutions.

Perhaps you’re skeptical that the mobilizing force behind a UN conference can be a single country and a single man. Things aren’t supposed to work that way. And you’re right, they probably aren’t. In an emergency--and clearly this is one-- we're grateful for everyone who makes over-dimensional contributions. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Christopher Gasson , owner of Global Water Intelligence, a “leading publisher and events-organizer serving the international water industry,” had to say:

The Dutch owned this conference. They deployed their royal family, their diplomats and technocrats in complete alignment in an awesome display of soft power that said: “water will never be an existential challenge for this planet for as long as Netherlands exists”. It means that this muddy corner of north west Europe with a population of 17.5 million and no aircraft carriers or nuclear weapons has a greater right to be listened to than countries 10 times its size. Besides, any nation who can produce a man like conference organizer?Henk Ovink?seems destined to rule the world whether we like it or not. His lightning quick mind, omnipresent energy, immediate empathy and ability to connect make the rest of us feel obsolete.

I agree with Glasson’s first sentence—"the Dutch owned this conference—but I start qualifying from that point on. Even if we discount his hyperbole, Gasson seems to be saying that the Dutch possess a deserved, unified and authoritative voice on international water affairs and the world should listen. I do listen and the one thing that has become abundantly clear is that the Dutch voice is far from unified, in fact, it’s fractured along multiple fault lines. What the Netherlands is good at is insinuating itself into high profile conversations in order to promote both its message and its water sector businesses. Their role in the UN Water Conference is an outstanding example.

According to the The Guardian, this was a UN conference full of voluntary pledges and commitments but short on what would be needed to enforce any of them, “such as a formal global agreement, like the 2015 Paris climate accords and the 2022 Montreal biodiversity pact, as well as better data and an international finance mechanism to safeguard water supplies.”[1]

Thanks to some feedback that I'm taking into account in this paragraph, I've come to realize that farming out this assessment to The Guardian, so to speak, was lazy on my part. I did so, in part, because my own experience of the conference was limited and certainly nowhere near a bird's eye view. I can't pretend to have read more than a handful of the hundreds of commitments that were made and thus am unable to appreciate the novel relationships that were formed and the cross-cutting work and negotiations that led to their formation. To focus on Henk's mobilization efforts is only half the story--the other half belongs to those who were mobilized and inspired to set new goals, adopt new frameworks and make new pledges. It's important to do them and their efforts justice. And to recognize that had more grassroots people and institutions from the Global South received visas and been able to attend, the effect would have been even greater. But now back to my more narrow focus.

The Dutch trotted out their share of pledges and new initiatives. I followed three of them closely: the Coalition for Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions (CMNBS), the International Panel for Deltas and Coastal Areas ( International Panel on Deltas and Coastal Areas (IPDC) ), and the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW). Each illuminates a different aspect of the Dutch approach.

The Coalition for Mainstreaming Nature-Based Solutions side event was off-site in what was called the UN Water House, essentially vacant office space in a nearby building.[2] The organizers of the event were EcoShape , Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO) , Rijkswaterstaat , World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Wereld Natuur Fonds (WWF-NL) . The Ecoshape moderator ran the show like a salesman. It wasn’t easy to harmonize the voices on the panel: while the marine engineering firm Van Oord characterized its scaled-up sand dredging and beach nourishment capacity as a nature-based solution, an Arcadis representative from NYC tried to be more ecologically circumspect and the American World Bank official sounded cautionary notes about the applicability of NbS. The overwhelming impression was of an amateur effort at salesmanship by a coalition that hadn’t agreed on the guiding principles of nature-based solutions, namely, that they 1) be linked to the rapid phase out of fossil fuels; 2) protect, restore and connect a wide range of ecosystems; 3) place the rights and knowledge of local communities and Indigenous Peoples at the center of policy and practice; and 4) intentionally support biodiversity.[3]

I first got wind of the International Panel for Deltas and Coastal Areas at a side event organized by the Local 2030 Islands Network. We met in a small UN conference room. I was surveying fellow audience members when I suddenly recognized the Dutch king sitting directly across from me. Soon after I spotted Mark Harbers , the minister of Infrastructure and Water, almost within shoulder-tapping distance; Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme , the Netherlands climate envoy (and cousin of the king); and the ubiquitous Henk Ovink. Clearly something was afoot. Moderated by two women from the Dutch Caribbean, the session started with the Dutch islands reporting on their climate and water-related challenges (in the presence of the king!). This was followed by the presentation of various island initiatives. And then Harm Duel from Deltares , introduced “the IPDC” and invited us to the launch set for the next day and a “deep dive” the day thereafter. My curiosity was piqued. What was the IPDC and why did it sound so suspiciously like the IPCC?

The next day, I attended the launch, presided over by Annemieke Nijhof , director of Deltares, someone for whom I have enormous respect. She was director general of water for the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water from 2008-11. But who were the members of this international panel (and was it even a panel)? What was its mission? Assembled in a large UN conference room, the audience was treated to a series of tributes to the Netherlands and short statements about the respective climate adaptation situation from an array of member countries, a quasi “who’s who” of past, present and future Dutch "client states," starting with Bangladesh, followed by islands of the Dutch Caribbean, South Africa, Colombia, Vietnam, Egypt, Singapore, Surinam, and finishing with Argentina, which had only just joined. Indonesia was glaringly absent. I left with more questions than answers and I hoped that the “deep dive” the following day would provide a fuller picture.

Ever since the launch of the Global Center on Adaptation in The Hague on 16 October 2018 by the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon, and the subsequent “international climate summit” of 2019, I am suspicious of the way the Dutch create para-international organizations that have the potential to serve as fronts for their water commerce and enterprise. I acknowledge that my view of the Global Center on Adaptation, housed in a floating office in Rotterdam, has improved because of their constructive focus on Sub-Saharan Africa, but the unmistakable phonic similarity between IPCC and IPDC put me on my guard.

The main question I took to the “deep dive” concerned how the Netherlands saw itself relative to the other member/client nations. For this meeting, we were back in the Dutch UN Water House with Annemieke Nijhof as moderator. What emanated from her was a sense of common vulnerability, shared urgency, and the need for a different way of conducting business. At one point she said, “Competition is immoral under the conditions we are facing.” Whether that view will prevail is a different matter. The IPDC’s stated role is to make the connection between climate science and SDG 6. This was most evident in a substantive document prepared by the Dutch Office of Spatial Panning ( Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL) ) called The Geography of Future Water Challenges: Bending the Trend.[4] Normally, the PBL confines itself to the territory of the Netherlands, but in this case, it prepared a useful document that analyzes four types of “hotspot landscapes” globally, along with a toolbox of integrated solutions.

The IPDC sees itself as an umbrella organization that facilitates tailor-made local actions requested by member nations. Member nations are called “champions” but seem more like clients. The secretariat is culled from Deltares, the GCA, and the Delta Alliance, another para-international Dutch institution. Given the prominence of the Dutch Caribbean, I can’t help but think that part of the impetus for the IPDC comes from pressure the government has been under to extend domestic levels of water security to the countries and territories within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. These events at the UN Water Conference clearly elevated the visibility and standing of Aruba, Curacao and St Maarten as countries, and Bonaire, St Eustatius and Saba as territories. Two months earlier, in her first official international act as heir to the throne, Princess Amalia had joined her parents on an extended visit to the islands. In March of 2024, the first meeting of the IPDC will take place. To borrow a line from the Poldergeist videos: “We’ll be watching.”

The Global Commission on the Economics of Water was the third organization I kept my eye on. The goal of the GCEW is “to transform the world’s understanding of the economics and governance of water, placing a strong emphasis on equity, justice, effectiveness and democracy.” The four co-chairs, all of whom spoke in a large UN conference room, are rock stars of inclusive international climate economics and science: Johan Rockstr?m, director of the revered Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Marianna Mazzucato, Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose; Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General of the World Trade Organization; and Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Senior Minister, Singapore. The piercing clarity and urgency of their presentations contrasted strikingly with the muddy delivery and mixed messages of the CMNBS and the IPDC. The back bench of lead experts, commissioners, and advisers is similarly powerful. But here’s the remarkable thing: although the GCEW was convened by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, only one Dutch name appears among them: Henk Ovink.

In my experience, the Dutch are not prone to self-reflection, let alone self-critique. At some point, though, a thoughtful person noted a cultural tension between two tendencies, that of “de koopman” (the salesman) and “de dominee” (the preacher). There’s general agreement that this is an accurate insight. Speaking on the basis of my impressions and gut feeling about the conference, I would say that the CMNBS represents the standard mode of Dutch international water engagement: salesmanship; the IPDC is still anchored in salesmanship but aspires to something higher; while the GCEW, it seems to me, is the clearest expression of the vision of what Henk Ovink, the missionary of water, knows needs to be done.

Henk’s term as Special Envoy of International Water Affairs is over. The Dutch government is already soliciting applications for his replacement. At the same time, as one of the achievements of the UN Water Conference, the UN is set to appoint an international water envoy. In an interview with Ovink published in Het Financieele Dagblad under the headline “We’re heading for the biggest water crisis ever,” the interviewer says; “This seems like a position created just for you.” Henk responds honestly: “Of course it would be a wonderful job, but my commitment is that it will be a woman from the Global South. We need to get rid of inequity in appointments of this kind. And yet, when I close my eyes, I secretly think: this would be a dream opportunity.”[5]

Admirable Dutch organizations that buttress parts of Henk’s vision or even go beyond were also players at the conference— Both ENDS and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education come to mind. But they didn’t “own the conference” in the way Henk and the Netherlands did. Where Henk will surface, how the Netherlands will conduct itself in the mounting international water crisis, and what the impact of the 2023 UN Water Conference will be—all this remains to be seen.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/24/united-nations-water-conference-new-york-pledges?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

[2] Since I kept running into Carter Craft, I suspect that the?Consulate?General of the?Netherlands?in New York made the arrangements. Unfortunately, the podium and stage were in set in front of a wall of sun-filled glass, which darkened the stage and made it difficult to take photos.

[3] https://www.naturebasedsolutionsinitiative.org/work-theme/best-practice-guidelines-for-policy-and-practice/

[4] https://www.pbl.nl/en/publications/geography-of-future-water-challenges

[5] https://fd.nl/politiek/1472785/watergezant-henk-ovink-we-stevenen-af-op-de-grootste-watercrisis-ooit-kgd3ca7wYzJR