The UN 2023 Water Conference is first event of its kind in 50 years and offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite the UN, government, public and private sector actors around water.
Amid all the chatter about accelerating progress on water and sanitation, let us take a moment to think about what we are doing and why it matters. Let's remind ourselves why we have a global water and sanitation crisis in the first place, and what this month's UN 2023 Water Conference needs to achieve if we are to resolve it.
As this Conference opens, 2 billion people will still be living without safely managed water and 3.6 billion without safely managed sanitation. These are the most basic of services necessary for healthy human life. It follows that the need for much faster action is utterly desperate--in particular among women, girls and marginalized groups.
Global demand for water is rocketing. Agriculture is getting thirstier, as are industry, manufacturing and energy generation. At the same time, climate change is making water supplies scarcer and more unpredictable, and many water sources are increasingly polluted.
This dysfunctional water cycle is already wreaking havoc. Families, farms, factories and societies on every continent are being affected. Millions of people are being displaced every year.
Consequently, we are seriously off-track in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, to ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030.
The latest data show that, on average, governments must accelerate progress by four times to meet the SDG 6 deadline. Many countries will need to make even quicker progress.
Even more concerning is that, since water is the lifeblood of our blue planet, poor progress on SDG 6 undermines the other 16 SDGs--including those dealing with health, education, gender and the environment. Hence, it is no exaggeration to say that lack of progress on water and sanitation is jeopardizing the entire 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
In sum, to leave societies and economies with such inadequately managed water and sanitation services is not just morally unjustifiable, it creates an existential threat to us all.
So, how do we move away from this dangerous path?
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has said, "the world is not moving incrementally. We cannot move incrementally. This is not a time for tinkering. It is a time for transformation."
Our current era of multiple and mutually reinforcing crises has made this brutally clear. The challenge can only be answered with an unprecedented response at the highest level, backed by global coordination.
But how and where do we take the action that can create the rapid change required?
There are no magic levers to pull but there are interventions that can act as catalysts to drive progress across the different areas of crisis. Progress on water and sanitation is one such intervention.
Just as negative water-related consequences flow through every major challenge, so too would positive water-related solutions have an impact on every social, economic and environmental challenge.
However, for too long water and sanitation have not benefited from the same strategic focus--nationally, regionally and multilaterally--as other global challenges such as climate change, health, food, gender, biodiversity and disaster relief. And thematic intergovernmental processes often fail to take water into account.
Water seems to occupy a curious position: simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, critical to everyone and yet no one's overall responsibility.
What should be done?
We need two things to happen at once: the United Nations must take the global lead on water as a critical issue, and water must be mainstreamed across all other intergovernmental processes related to sustainable development.
This is why the UN 2023 Water Conference is so important. As the first event of its kind in 50 years, it offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to unite the United Nations system, government, public and private sector actors around water. The aim must be to both speed up and scale up progress towards the 2030 Agenda.
This cannot be just another conference--it has to be a gamechanger, because solving our water issues is synonymous with solving climate change, hunger, poverty, gender inequality, low educational attainment, poor healthcare services and many other hurdles that stand between us and a better, sustainable future.
The main outcome of the Conference will be the Water Action Agenda. This plan will outline a path for rapid, transformative change, up to and beyond 2030, incorporating both existing and new voluntary commitments, from all sectors and all levels of society, for meeting SDG 6 on time.
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To conclude, let me leave you with this thought: water is everyone's business. We all have a part to play.
That is what the UN-Water-led World Water Day 2023 campaign reminds us--that we should "be the change" we want to see.
There is an ancient story of a hummingbird who, when faced with a great fire in a forest, carries single droplets of water to fight the blaze. The other animals just stand and scoff. The hummingbird says, "I'm doing what I can."
Each of us may only be able to make a small difference, but the more of us who "do what we can," the more progress will be made.
Join our movement, put water at the heart of what you do, and we will make our world a safer, fairer, healthier, more sustainable place.
Mr. Houngbo is the Director-General of the International Labour Organization and the Chair - UN Water.
The UN 2023 Water Conference, co-hosted by the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Tajikistan, is being held at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 22 to 24 March.
This article was first published in UN Chronicle
