International water fora and the prevailing needs for local implementation and broader participation

Abstract

The United Nations (UN) 2023 Water Conference was held from March 22–24 at the UN Headquarters in New York, USA. There was a clear message from Day 1 of the Conference: “we are not on track to achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on water and sanitation for all.” Moreover, business-as-usual approaches for water management do not seem effective facing the so-called triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss (What is the Triple Planetary Crisis? | UNFCCC). Hence, the Conference aimed to raise awareness of the global water crisis and to make agreements on concerted actions to mobilize all sectors, stakeholders, and countries toward the resolution of this global issue. Among them, the agreement to establish a UN Special Envoy for Water (different figure than the Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water), ground more than seven hundred voluntary commitments and pledges, and renew the political momentum in fora such as the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, held this July 2023, and the SDG Summit in September 2023 to follow up on the SDGs and Agenda 2030, as well as the commitments of the Decade for Action on Water (2018–2028).The UN, in fact, has promoted numerous initiatives to mobilize citizens around the SDGs. Presently, the UN has declared a total of 206 International Environmental Days to honor specific human and environmental subjects. Among them, only 40 are specifically related to the environment or socio-environmental issues. The majority of all of these declarations are followed by “mega-conferences”1 related to the same subjects: that is, RAMSAR/wetlands sites, sustainable development, biodiversity, climate change, and the latest one is water. The UN states that these commemorative dates and fora are meant to “educate the public on issues of concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and to celebrate and reinforce achievements of humanity” (United Nations, 2023) ). We have nothing against the raising of awareness and the need to take political action, but we would rather like to offer a reflection on two critical and historical challenges related to these global events: (a) the implementation of global water fora accords from global-to-local governance, and (b) the need for broader and inclusive participation of different stakeholders, with particular focus on water issues.