The UN 2023 Water Conference was held from 22 to 24 March in New York with participants making commitments to tackle the global water crisis. It confirmed that water issues truly unite the world, as a determined global community came together to make a difference not only for the future of water but for the future of the world.
According to the recent Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, globally around 3.6 billion people live in contexts that are highly vulnerable to climate change. Climate change has caused substantial damages and increasingly irreversible losses to freshwater ecosystems as well as increases in heavy precipitation, floods and droughts.
Continued global warming will further intensify impacts on the global water cycle. Every region in the world faces further increases in climate extremes and multiple risks such as flooding, biodiversity loss in land, freshwater and ocean ecosystems with a decrease in food production in some regions.
A whole system approach is urgently needed that cuts across disciplines to address water-climate-related risks in an integrated manner. Even though significant advances in Earth observation and data management have provided opportunities in modeling for water-related risk assessment, the challenges of transforming these solutions at the operational level prevail.
Investing in protection and expansion of natural environments has the potential to provide both mitigation and adaptation solutions to the climate emergency. In order to use this potential, water has to be seen as an asset class, not just a resource. To make this happen, the Green Climate Fund for example is working on a co-financing platform, which enables catalytic water-climate related financing needed for public and private sector investment.
Knowledge to action
At a side event co-organized by the UNFCCC secretariat, the Green Climate Fund and the World Meteorological Organization, the UNFCCC executive secretary Simon Stiell elaborated on an action pledge coordinated by UNFCCC under its Nairobi Work Programme on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation. The Pledge hinges on 3 major pillars: Knowledge, Innovation, and Action, with the aim of building new types of partnerships to bridge knowledge gaps and collectively accelerate water-climate adaptation action. By harnessing diverse knowledge systems, the pledge looks to ensure “that no adaptation action focused on water is hindered by a lack of knowledge.”
To read more about the UNFCCC engagement in the UN 2023 Water Conference, see this UNFCCC Newsroom Article.
Photo credit: Jake Allison - Unsplash
