UN 2023 Water Conference – was it the watershed moment we have all been waiting for?

Almost 7,000 people gathered in New York for the recent UN 2023 Water Conference – the first global water conference since 1977. It promised a watershed moment for the sustainable development community as the world united for water action. In the words of Henk Ovink, the Dutch special envoy to the United Nations, “this conference is the beginning of a rippling effect across the world.”?

The need for action on water has grown increasingly urgent. In the 46 years since the first water conference in Mar del Plata, Argentina, progress on water-related goals and targets has been alarmingly off-track, jeopardising the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The outcomes of the UN 2023 Water Conference, therefore, needed to be ground-breaking.?

For many, however, it created more questions than answers.?

Are voluntary commitments enough??

A major outcome of the conference was that UN Member States and stakeholders made more than 700 pledges to the Water Action Agenda, a platform aimed at creating partnerships and cooperation towards shared urgent, immediate and accelerated action and establishing a robust international mechanism to prevent the global water crisis from spiralling out of control. During the opening plenary, UN General Assembly President, Csaba K?r?si called for transformative solutions, warning delegates, “Our chance is here and now. We may not have another.”?

Some believe that more was needed from this conference beyond voluntary commitments, such as a formal global agreement like the 2015 Paris Agreement or the 2022 Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework. More than 100 water experts from research institutions and civil society groups sent an open letter to the UN Secretary-General on the last day of the conference highlighting a lack of “accountability, rigour and ambition.”?

Global desire to achieve water security?

As the talks ended, there was broad agreement that water should be treated as a global common good, and that the world’s approach to water must be less fragmented given water’s interconnections with the climate crisis and food, energy and national security. And there remained a determination to achieve tangible actions, showing the global commitment to achieving water security and providing a road map towards a water-secure future – an ongoing journey. The Secretary-General, António Guterres, pledged UN support “every step of the way” as the world enters the second half of the Water Action Decade. This pledge was accompanied with an agreement to establish a UN Special Envoy for Water ahead of the SDG Summit in September.?

But will this be enough to hold stakeholders accountable to pledges? And how do we transform a determination to act into action? We cannot guess to what extent the conference will affect the achievement of the SDGs. One thing we do know, however, is that we do not have time to wait another 46 years.?

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