Advancing Climate Adaptation through Country Participation in the UN Water Conference

Ahead of the UN Water Conference which will take place on 22-24 March in New York, AGWA co-hosted an online event on 13 February together with the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the World Resources Institute (WRI) to exchange knowledge on water-centric approaches to climate adaptation and resilience.

The Adaptation Action Coalition (AAC) event invited speakers from Nepal, Panama and Somalia to share how countries are integrating water into their climate adaptation strategies, their response to Sustainable Development Goal 6 agenda and engagement in the UN Water Conference.

All three countries represented at the event have adopted the Water Tracker for National Climate Planning tool, an AAC initiative led by AGWA. The Water Tracker is being used by countries worldwide to ensure that national climate plans and other development plans take into account the embedded water requirements, with an aim to increase water resilience and coherence between sectors.

The task ahead, said Gerard Howe, Head of Adaptation at the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office: “is to connect this emergent policy to practice at national, sub-national, municipal and local levels, and crucially connect to financing and investment that is going to take us to scale.”

“We’ve wrecked the hydrological cycle,” said Henk Ovink, Special Envoy for International Water Affairs from The Netherlands. Ovink emphasized that the UN Water Conference is coming at a critical time to improve the trajectory of our impact on water globally. The conference aims to catalyze global commitments and transformative action on water, shifting the perception of water as a technical sector to a driver for sustainable development.

Dr Ligia Castro, Advisor to the Minister and Director of Climate Change in Panama, described how the Ministry of the Environment has incorporated climate risk assessment and water footprint analysis into environmental audits and adaptation plans, as well as optimizing the use of water in compliance with the commitments made in the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

Dr Kapil Gnawali, a hydrologist and engineer for the Government of Nepal, presented a wide range of actions being planned and carried out in Nepal to address both adaptation and mitigation. “The Water Tracker tool has opened avenues to making climate policies water smart and water policies climate resilient,” he said. The tool will help ensure that investments in implementation are effective and make progress towards Nepal’s mitigation and adaptation goals.

In Somalia, they are only just starting to take the climate crisis seriously, according to Adam Aw Hirsi, the country’s Minister of State for Environment and Climate Change. Just four days previously, the first National Environmental Protection Bill was passed in the Cabinet. The National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process is underway with an aim to strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change by mainstreaming climate change into sustainable development, which includes water as a high priority.

Throughout 2023, AGWA and partners will continue to scale up application of the Water Tracker with new countries while deepening engagement towards policy implementation for those who have already undertaken the initial assessment steps. Next month’s UN Water Conference will serve as an opportunity to share initial results and engage with the wider global water community.