Latest updates from GWI-“When the president of Tajikistan hammers us home today, the mandate of the Co-Hosts is gone. After that, the world ha...

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Latest updates from GWI-“When the president of Tajikistan hammers us home today, the mandate of the Co-Hosts is gone. After that, the world ha...
Latest updates from GWI-
“When the president of Tajikistan hammers us home today, the mandate of the Co-Hosts is gone. After that, the world has to continue working hard to get water right.”

Henk Ovink’s closing remarks hinted at one of the biggest questions to come out of the conference: will we get a dedicated UN Water Envoy?

149 member states signed a letter addressed to UN Secretary General António Guterres asking just that last September. “We look forward to his answer to this call,” said Ovink. “Because that call was resonating [during the conference]. But that envoy itself will not serve the goal: we need an enabling environment, perhaps a task force to drive action for water security for all.”

Ovink highlighted the limitations of voluntary commitments. Although more than 700 commitments were pledged as part of the conference, he said it was not enough. “We have to make sure we structure them in a way that we can monitor and assess them and seek opportunities for replication and scale.”

GWI’s own initial research into the commitments suggests many are existing initiatives repackaged for the occasion, or fairly meaningless pledges without measurable outcomes. Regardless, the Water Action Agenda is here to stay and will form the basis of water discussions at subsequent UN summits, starting with the SDG Summit in September.

Ovink bemoaned the fact that the conference had not given the water community the mandate to elevate water to the level of biodiversity or climate change with their COPs. “But we brought the world together to ensure there is a follow-up.”

It seems like appointing a water envoy is a no-brainer for the UN. What is less clear is the impact he or she will have. Ovink was one of a kind, blending the soft power and water expertise of his home nation The Netherlands with his own brand of empathy and energy. But even he couldn’t get a water COP.

So for now, it’s down to the half-baked Water Action Agenda and whether the water community can find it in itself to keep the momentum going. It’s going to be a very long road to 2030.

24.03.2023
Quote of the week
As we wind up our coverage and collapse into our planes back to Europe, we'd like to leave you with one stand-out quote from the conference. Thanks for following!

“There are two fundamental ideas that we have to dispel. The first, the idea of a trade-off between efficiency and equity. In the case of water, it is exactly the opposite. It is massive inefficiency that is fueling inequity. The second is that the global common good is somehow in tension with national interests. It should be seen not as a draw on aid budget but as an investment in the global common good.”

Tharman Shanmugaratnam,

Senior Minister, Government of Singapore & Co-Chair of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water
https://bit.ly/3FTHy6Y

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