Month: March 2023

During the UN Water Conference, held at UN Headquarters between 22-24 March, Two countries joined the Convention, against the backdrop of a growing global water crisis, in which climate change, pollution, and rising demand are posing challenges for developing and developed countries alike.

On Thursday Nigeria became the 48^h country to join the treaty. The fast-growing country, the most populous in Africa, is dealing directly with the effects of desertification, having seen Lake Chad, an important water source, shrink by around 90 per cent since the 1970s.

And on Friday, Iraq also joined, the first in the Middle East to do so. Nineteen of the 22 Arab countries are considered water scarce, and nearly all Arab States draw upon transboundary water resources that cross one or more international boundaries. Iraq is experiencing mounting social, economic and political pressures due to water scarcity.

On the second day of the Conference, Conor Lennon from UN News moderated a discussion at the SDG Media Zone, on how to improve cross-border cooperation between countries which share water resources. He was joined by Sonja Köppel, the Secretary to the Water Convention, and Suleiman Adamu, Nigeria’s Federal Minister of Water Resources.

The following is an edited summary of the SDG Media Zone session.

Conor Lennon: What has the Water Convention achieved since it entered into force in 1996?

Sonja Köppel: More than 60 per cent of all freshwater resources are shared by two or more countries, so cooperating on the use of those waters is crucial for peace, sustainable development, and climate action.

The Water Convention is a unique legal and intergovernmental platform, which has helped to facilitate up to 100 agreements between countries, helping to prevent conflicts, and set up strong institutions for its joint management.

In Europe, it has led to concrete energy generation agreements, and improved ecosystem well-being. And, in recent years, there has been an increased momentum for cooperation.

In Africa, around 20 countries are in the process of accession to the Convention, and now there’s also increasing interest in Latin America, and even Asia.

The Water Convention is highlighting the topic of transboundary water cooperation at the international level, and this is now reflected in the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]. Target 5 of SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation for All) includes a call for transboundary water cooperation.

Conor Lennon: What difference will joining the Convention make to Nigeria?

Suleiman Adamu: What is important is that we are now moving from a regional situation to a more global community. Water security is very important to us. We are dealing with Boko Haram terrorism in the northeast, partly due to the lack of opportunities arising from the shrinking of Lake Chad. We hope that joining the Convention will draw more attention to this issue.

Conor Lennon: Lake Chad has shrunk some 90 per cent over the last 60 years. This must have made a huge difference to people living in that region.

Suleiman Adamu: We estimate around 14 million people are affected in one way or the other, in one of the poorest areas on earth, where people are dealing with desertification and other climate challenges.

We worry that, sometime in the next few decades, we might find that there will be no Lake left at all. We really need to wake up and address this challenge.

The crisis has also moved inland, because some of the grazing areas around the Lake Chad are no longer available. There is growing conflict between nomadic herders and sedentary farmers in the middle section of the country, and there’s a move towards the south, where there is better quality land, in the absence of what used to be available around Lake Chad. It’s a big challenge for Nigeria.

Sonja Köppel: Accession to the Water Convention means that Nigeria will be able to benefit from the global expertise, capacity building, and good practices from existing parties in different parts of the world. It also sends a positive signal to the international community, including international financial institutions.

It can also mean support for climate change adaptation because, as we all know, water and climate change are closely interlinked. The Water Convention is helping countries by developing joint adaptation strategies, so Nigeria will be able to bring forward its requests and needs.

Conor Lennon: Are you resigned to Lake Chad disappearing? Or can it be saved?

Suleiman Adamu: The inter-basin water transfer project from the Congo Basin to Lake Chad is probably one of the best solutions to this problem, because we can’t stop desertification. It’s a large-scale, drastic solution, to move a large volume of water, that generally flows into the Atlantic Ocean, to Lake Chad.

Conor Lennon: Can the global water crisis be solved?

Sonja Köppel: We need to mobilize governments at the highest level and mobilize financial institutions and the private sector. We also need to involve civil society and young people, and have strong advocates for water, demonstrating that water is crucial for all the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Agenda sets out a series of action-oriented game changing commitments, from making smarter food choices to re-evaluating water as a powerful economic driver, and part of the Earth’s cultural heritage.

Water-secure future for all

The conference, and its 2,000 participants, forged an “ambitious vision”, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres said.

“Your dedication to action and transformation is propelling us towards a sustainable, equitable and inclusive water-secure future for people and planet alike,” he said. “This conference demonstrated a central truth: as humanity’s most precious global common good, water unites us all, and it flows across a number of global challenges.”

From protecting the spread of disease to fighting poverty, the natural resource also flows through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at a time when the world is grappling with climate change, water scarcity, and pollution.

“That’s why water needs to be at the centre of the global political agenda,” he said. “All of humanity’s hopes for the future depend, in some way, on charting a new science-based course to bring the Water Action Agenda to life.”

Doing so translates into such forward-looking actions as developing new, alternative food systems to reduce the unsustainable use of water in agriculture, while launching a new global information system to guide plans and priorities to realize the SDGs. New considerations include appointing a Special Envoy for water ahead of the SDG Summit in September, he said.

Water Action Agenda is ‘just the beginning’

Lending multiple perspectives and expertise to navigate the challenges ahead, more than 2,000 government representatives, scientists, academics, civil society groups, indigenous peoples, members of the private sector, and youth delegates attended the conference, held at UN Headquarters 22 to 24 March.

Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, said Water Action Agenda commitments cover a wide range of actions, from capacity-building to data and monitoring systems, to improving the resilience of infrastructure.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “The online platform hosting the Water Action Agenda will remain open for submissions and available for all to view through the Conference website.”

Another key outcome of the conference will be a summary by the UN General Assembly President, capturing the many ideas, recommendations, and solutions to protect and support “our world’s lifeblood” that emerged during five interactive dialogues, four special events and hundreds of side events, he said.

“At the 2023 UN Water Conference, a determined global community came together to make a difference not only for the future of water but for the future of the world,” he said.

‘A page of history’

General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi said the $300 billion in pledges made to buoy the transformative Water Action Agenda has the potential of unlocking at least $1 trillion of socioeconomic and eco-system gains.

“The outcome of this conference is not a legally binding document, but it still turns the page of history,” he said, in closing remarks. “You have reconfirmed the promise to implement the human right to water and sanitation for all.”

That means reaching the millions who are not even aware of this conference, he said.

“We will keep our ears and minds open to scientific evidence as we move forward to realize the transformation discussed,” he said.

Civil society and the private sector are at the heart of this transformation and “key to our success” he said, adding that they must be part of more inclusive partnerships and solutions.

“Today, we hold the pieces of a water-secure and more peaceful world in our hands,” he said. “Together, we can launch the transformation for a water-secure world, and these gamechangers can take us there.”

‘Our common future’

The Secretary-General pledged UN support “every step of the way”, as Member States take action through the second half of the Water Action Decade.

“Without water, there can be no sustainable development,” Mr. Guterres said, thanking all stakeholders. “As we leave this historic conference, let’s re-commit to our common future. Let’s take the next steps in our journey to a water-secure future for all.”

© UNICEF

A six-year-old girl drinks water from a community hand pump in Pakistan.

Water may be scarce, but our actions to tackle this crisis shouldn’t be.

From scientific data to indigenous knowledge – we must harness the power of all perspectives to create lasting change

Let’s take #WaterAction for a better future.
#WorldWaterReport: https://t.co/dxSXVtZg9F https://t.co/Y3680W0as5

A worldwide network of water analysis laboratories and a tool to foster collective national level action to improve coordination on water management, were among the commitments announced on Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the margins of the UN 2023 Conference, which has been running in New York since Wednesday and will close on Friday, 24 March. 

The commitments, in line with the Water Action Agenda and the push to see all countries achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, were announced at the SDG Media Zone, which has been the stage for vital discussion and the announcement of other major commitments, while the main plenary and high-level panels have been underway in other parts of the UN Headquarters campus. 

Water analysis labs

Announcing the IAEA’s global water analysis laboratory network, known as GloWAL, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that this interconnected network can through the application of nuclear techniques, help countries to identify the nature and characteristics of water (isotope hydrology). 

“This technology can help us read many things,” he continued, citing, among others, a water sources’ content, degradation, and renewability. “By establishing this network of labs, we are giving countries the ability to identify from a scientific point of view, the nature of the water issues they are facing” and then developed or adapt policy solutions that address them. 

Further, beyond issues related to the global water crisis, GloWAL will also help address another key challenge facing the international community: the technology gap and lagging access to data collection that has long plagued developing countries. “When developing countries do not have the ability to know what the problem is and how to solve it, they are in a much worse situation.” 

“So GloWAL is about this: it’s about giving countries the ability to collect their own data. We are going to train them and give them the necessary equipment to do that,” Mr. Grossi explained, adding that: as far as commitments go, this was a very concrete initiative that would help countries be better prepared to face the myriad effects of the water crisis. 

Asked to give an example of how the network my work, Mr. Grossi said that while he wouldn’t like to say one country faced more challenges than another, he could point to Tajikistan, the co-host of the Water Conference (along with the Kingdom of the Netherlands). 

Indeed, Tajikistan, which is home to massive glaciers that provide much of the region’s freshwater would host a GloWAL laboratory that would monitor the health of those vital water sources.  

“Glacier degradation is a very serious problem in this country and by doing this we are giving them the ability to see how fast the glaciers and snowcaps can be regenerated, and how to perhaps better manage the runoff water, because of course, if it is melting, there will be less of it,” he said.

Agriculture is a ‘dealmaker’ 

For his part, Lifeng Li, Director, Land and Water Division at FAO, said that water accounts for 70 per cent of global freshwater withdrawals, so rather than being a dealbreaker, agriculture could be a dealmaker in dealing with the crisis.  

“It is doable,” he said, because there are many solutions to improve efficiency and reduce the amount of water used for agriculture. Indeed, in many larger countries, like China and the United States, the use of more sustainable water and land management practices has seen crop yields increase even as overall water used for agriculture had begun to decline  

“Irrigated agriculture is at least three times more productive”, he continued, stressing that the aim should be to improve efficiency, particularly as we would need to produce about 50 per cent more agricultural products for our planet’s growing population by 2050. “We have seen this efficiency lead increased production of ‘thirsty crops’ like rice, sugar cane and cotton.” 

“We strongly believe that agriculture can contribute to a more water and food secure world in the future … if we first look at efficiency … and second, the agriculture sector should look at how to re-use and recycle water. For instance, many countries and especially in their urban areas, are making strides to re-use their wastewater, after it has been treated, for agriculture. 

With this in mind, he said that FAO had submitted seven commitments to the UN Water Conference, dealing both with policy as well as innovation. Running through all the agency’s initiatives, he noted among them, the National Water Roadmaps towards the 2030 Agenda, a tool to foster collective action at national level to improve cross sectorial coordination on water management and governance in support of the SDGs.

He also announced a “Global Dialogue on Water Tenure” within the framework of water governance, and to engage with Member States, as well as partners from civil society, academia, the private sector, and sister UN agencies, to define principles on the Responsible Governance of Water Tenure. 

Working together

Nanette Braun, Conference Spokesperson (UN Department of Global Communications), asked how the two agencies might work together towards the goals of the Water Action agenda and Mr. Grossi said that FAO and the IAEA had been long-time partners in these areas and indeed, they were the only two international organizations to have a joint working centre, in this case for Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture.  

“We recognized early on that the nexus between energy and food,” explained Mr. Grossi, and the Joint Centre aims to contribute to global food security and sustainable agricultural development worldwide.

For example, as FAO was working on enhancing irrigation and other agricultural techniques, the IAEA worked on drought resistant crops. All this work is carried out to ensure there are no negative environmental impacts. “We are bringing solutions to concrete problems.” 

The @iaeaorg enjoys an excellent collaboration with @FAO in #food security. In New York, I agreed with @FAODG to strengthen our already excellent work together, through our Joint Center, to harness the benefits of #nuclear for sustainable agriculture & food production worldwide. https://t.co/e6wSftU8IF