From Tragedy to Opportunity: The Global Water Crisis and How to Solve It
Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action
Reflecting on the UN 2023 Water Conference and all its meetings, new initiatives, and publications, I believe one report will be the most impactful. It's the landmark report Turning the Tide, launched during the conference by the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
It's a call to action to change how we value, use, care for and govern water. A drastic change is needed since we live in a world where 2 billion people don't have access to safe water and sanitation. Or, to mention another shocking statistic, a world where women collectively spend 200 million hours every day collecting water.
Water management
Water is the connector of all Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore we need to solve the global water crisis to successfully fight poverty, hunger, or the climate and biodiversity crises. We are increasingly facing local water crises, but it is also a global crisis, a systemic problem caused by decades of worldwide mismanagement of water.
Water management is at the core of this problem; if there is one number that shows both the urgency and scale of this crisis, it is the prediction that by 2030, global demand is expected to outstrip the supply of fresh water by 40 percent. Nations should manage water as a global common good since countries depend on each other for water and because global trends like climate change and pollution are not limited to a country's borders. These challenges are exacerbated by inadequate investment in water infrastructure and management and ineffective governance, subsidies, and institutional arrangements.
A call to action
The report offers a sobering assessment of the state of the world's water resources and provides a roadmap for action to ensure sustainable water use for generations to come. The report's authors presented their seven-point 'Call to Collective Action' at the Water Conference. It provides a path they believe could be realized in the current decade.
They write in their report about this ambition that:
"It will enable us to convert water from a growing global tragedy to immense global opportunity: to bring a new direction to policies and collaboration, innovation and investment, and finance, so that we conserve and use water more efficiently, and ensure that everyone has access to the water they need."
Recommendations
The key recommendations for policymakers, businesses, and civil society organizations are:
Manage the global water cycle as a global common good, recognizing the interconnectedness of communities and nations and the critical role of water in achieving sustainable development goals.
Adopt an outcomes-focused, mission-driven approach to water that includes delivering on the human right to safe water, stabilizing the global water cycle, mobilizing multiple stakeholders, and ensuring shared value.
Cease underpricing water and account for its non-economic value in decision-making to enable efficient, equitable, and sustainable use.
Phase out subsidies in agriculture and water that generate excessive water consumption and other environmentally damaging practices. Reduce leakages in water systems, and require disclosure of water footprints to incentivize conservation and universal access.
Establish Just Water Partnerships to enable investments in water access, resilience, and sustainability in low- and middle-income countries, using complementary strengths of different financing streams and maximizing synergies with climate change strategies and national development goals.
Move ahead on opportunities to fortify freshwater storage systems, develop the urban circular water economy, reduce water footprints in manufacturing, and shift agriculture to precision irrigation, less water-intensive crops, and drought-resilient farming.
Reshape multilateral governance of water to incorporate water conservation standards in trade agreements, support capacity building for all, prioritize gender equality in water decision-making, and empower frontline communities and consumers.
The Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) held an official side event at the UN 2023 Water Conference, which is available on YouTube. So if you have 75 minutes, it is worth watching:
Over the next year, the Commission plans to further develop its ideas and proposals by participating in worldwide societal dialogues. Its final report, set to be released in 2024, aims to complete the sustainability trilogy that started with the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity.
I write this newsletter because I believe we can do better on this beautiful but fragile planet if we work together.
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I also wrote on the UN 2023 Water Conference in these articles:
Notes:
Mazzucato, M., N. Okonjo-Iweala, J. Rockström and T. Shanmugaratnam (2023), Turning the Tide: A Call to Collective Action, Global Commission on the Economics of Water, Paris.
Photo by Daniel Sinoca
Some change in everyone’s access to drinkable water and sanitation is slowly happening. I want to have optimistic views and hope as Lizzie does that by the time of the next report significant progress and cooperation happens among protagonists.
This is a clear and concise summary of “Turning the Tide,” the event I live-streamed during the Water Conference and was pleased to review in your article once again. The seven goals are well stated requiring much work to be done quickly. The urgency is apparent; the money 💰 to achieve the goals by 2030 is available and not nearly so prohibitive as other SDGs. From my perspective in the USA 🇺🇸 , inadequate infrastructure, misplaced subsidies, usage of fresh water that could be redirected, absence to my knowledge of recycling wastewater, and the failure of governance to act predictably above and beyond nationalistic ideals are among the hurdles to progress in this essential area. “Failure to Imagine” comes to mind as rarely if ever does the MSM focus on this issue unless in the context of extreme weather events which are becoming more common. Now as Spring is upon us in the SE the first obvious challenge (from my window to the world) is to change the life long habits of homeowners behaviors in lawn maintenance, trying every year to groom carpets of grass requiring fertilizer, toxic “weed” killers, and watering during dry spells; instead of embracing natural habitat. Alternative “sustainable “ gardening practices are available but change is difficult especially in times of stress, ie political upheaval. Your dedication and focus in this area can only be positive in effecting change! You have my attention, my support and admiration for the work you have done thus far; so very well done! 💦🌍🕊️