The 39th UN-Water Meeting brought together its Members and Partners to brainstorm how to implement the first-ever UN system-wide water and sanitation strategy. Another key focus during the meeting was coordination and collaboration with other international processes. Discussions on the launches of upcoming reports were also prominent.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution (A/RES/77/334) that called for the water and sanitation strategy follows up on the UN 2023 Water Conference, which took place in March 2023. The Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) reports that “UN-Water was assigned the responsibility for developing the collaborative implementation plan for the strategy.”

Among the issues the implementation plan should address, UN-Water Meeting participants highlighted:

• The confusion of many inside and outside the UN who think UN-Water is an agency, rather than a coordination mechanism among its Members and Partners;
• The importance of better communication among UN-Water’s Task Forces, which are comprised of representatives from UN-Water Members and Partners; and
• Communication challenges with actors at the regional and national levels and the need to ensure the UN system can deliver more strategic, effective support to countries.

The ENB summary report further notes that “[p]articipants supported the development of tools such as a repository of agreed text on water and sanitation within intergovernmental agreements and resolutions.”

On improving collaboration with other processes, participants highlighted several upcoming events that could help raise the profile of water and sanitation issues. These include: the Summit of the Future; the One Water Summit, proposed by France and Kazakhstan during the UAE Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 28); and the 2024 meetings of the Conferences of the Parties to all three Rio Conventions – the UNFCCC, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). “Participants also looked forward to the conferences on water and sanitation in 2026 and 2028,” ENB writes, that “were called for in the same UN General Assembly resolution that called for the new strategy.”

Discussions on the launches of upcoming reports addressed:

• The World Water Development Report, focused on ‘Water for Prosperity and Peace,’ that will be launched on World Water Day on 22 March;
• The report by the secretariat of the Global Commission on the Economics of Water, to be launched at the One Water Summit in September, that has been described as the water equivalent of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change (released in 2006) and the Dasgupta Review on the economics of biodiversity (issued in 2021); and
• A UN-Water Analytical Brief on the Water Dependencies of Climate Mitigation, to be released ahead of the Baku Climate Change Conference in November 2024.

The 39th UN-Water Meeting convened in Rome, Italy, from 12-13 March 2024, at the headquarters of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). [ENB Coverage of 39th UN-Water Meeting]