A Second UN Water Conference in Late 2026

In December 2026, the second UN Water Conference of the 21st Century will take place in Abu Dhabi. This is a very important event, as nations have never before gathered at the United Nations to work together on issues related to inland waters. The first conference took place in January 2023 in New York. That first conference yielded positive results. National leaders realized that they all faced water challenges and concluded that there was a global crisis in this area. Furthermore, a taboo was broken. Thanks to several countries, including France, discussions were able to begin regarding the shortcomings of what has since been termed global water governance. And it was decided to hold a second UN Water Conference focusing on global goals, which had not been the priority in 2023. This new Conference is much better prepared than the first. In particular, all countries met in Dakar last January at the ministerial level to begin discussing together, following the thematic structure planned for the Conference itself. This intergovernmental meeting in Dakar showed that attitudes have shifted significantly since 2023: many countries are now calling for these UN Water Conferences to become a permanent fixture, a far greater number than in 2023. The hope is that water will be managed much more effectively on a global scale in the future.

The December discussions will be organized around six major themes covering all key water-related issues. For each topic, countries will seek to drive progress. This will be the case for global water governance, which is one of the six major themes. We can hope that this will advance the cause. Several avenues are being explored.

But if we are not careful, it could also regress, as there is a subtle threat that few stakeholders are currently aware of. It is the risk of losing our bearings and having no global water goals left in five years!

To understand and assess this threat, it is helpful to first take stock of recent progress in global water governance.

 

A headless duck

When it came to water, the international community at the start of the 21st century was like a headless chicken: no shared vision of the issues, no common goals, little shared statistical data, and no collective memory. Many UN agencies were working on water issues but without any real coordination. Countries did not meet at the United Nations to discuss water. The only place where governments discussed water was at the diplomatic conferences organized by the host countries of the World Water Forums. These conferences were very useful—they helped, for example, to establish the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation—but they were short-lived and did not allow for collective decision-making, as such decisions are made at the UN. Countries’ water-related goals were disparate, and their actions rarely addressed global needs. Oh, there was indeed a global goal for access to safe drinking water adopted in 2000, but it was not ambitious and was declared achieved in 2012—three years ahead of schedule—despite the billions of people who still had access only to contaminated water. Without a shared understanding of the issues at stake, without common goals, without a mechanism for tracking progress, and without a forum for regular diplomatic discussions, global water governance was virtually nonexistent compared to many other issues—such as health or food security—which had clear objectives, regular intergovernmental meetings, actionable decisions, and permanent UN structures.

 

Real Progress in Global Governance

The graph in Figure 1 schematically illustrates the progress made since 2000 and its relative importance in terms of governance. The vertical axis represents a subjective assessment of the quality of global governance relative to that of health or food issues.

Beyond the existence of the World Water Forums, the first major steps forward were the Millennium Development Goals, which included a target for safe drinking water in 2000 and another for sanitation in 2003. Then, in 2010, access to safe drinking water and sanitation was recognized as a human right. In and of itself, this recognition was very significant. However, for it to serve to improve the lives of the billions of people whose rights are being violated, a large-scale operational implementation program was needed. Such a program, the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was adopted in 2015. This was an opportunity for all countries to decide, for the first time, that they wanted to ensure universal access to safe drinking water and quality sanitation at affordable prices, thereby largely meeting human rights requirements. Better yet, the 2030 Agenda adopted in 2015 includes some twenty ambitious global water-related goals aimed at addressing all major global water challenges within a clear overarching vision. These global goals thus address issues ranging from population access to pollution control, water resource sustainability, and water-related disasters (see Figure 2). With a clear overarching vision and goals addressing all major challenges, the duck found its way. In 2015, the world found a compass. Better yet, progress indicators were defined and developed, which within a few years provided a much more precise and objective understanding of the global situation regarding these issues. I would point out, for example, that until 2021, no one in the world had the slightest idea of the global proportion of wastewater flows that are treated before being discharged into the environment—a fact that was quite convenient for justifying inaction but did nothing to help us move forward.

 

And then countries finally began to come together at the UN, holding a first Conference on Water in All Its Aspects in January 2023, followed by a second one in December 2026. Since the UN serves as the secretariat for these conferences, the debates are recorded and accessible, decisions are implemented and at least partially monitored, and progress reports are produced regularly. At the same time, UN-Water has grown in strength, and a UN Water Strategy has emerged, which has greatly improved internal coordination among UN agencies. Today, the duck knows much better where it needs to go and whether it is getting there.

However, progress is far too slow. Setting goals such as universal access to truly safe drinking water, halving the volume of untreated wastewater discharged, and ensuring the sustainability of water resources helps guide policy. But the results achieved in relation to these goals are woefully inadequate. Défis Humanitaires published two of my articles[1] detailing this shortfall in drinking water and sanitation in its March 22, 2025, issue. Subsequent updates to global statistics have confirmed the trends described in these articles.

 

Further Progress Expected at Abu Dhabi 2026

However, there is still work to be done to achieve a level of global governance comparable to that in the fields of health or food. By virtue of its very existence, the December 2026 Conference will already represent further progress, as for the first time, nations will come together to assess their woefully inadequate progress toward global water-related goals. The need is enormous, as there is a gaping gap between the goals and the sum of the results of national policies. Could this discussion finally trigger the corrective measures and the political acceleration process that is absolutely necessary? Will this enable all sectors to be mobilized toward achieving the water goals by engaging the Ministers of Finance, Agriculture, Energy, Industry, and Cities? Will this Conference help us understand and acknowledge that if the goals are not being met, it is simply because many national policies today do not aim to achieve them, and that ambitious goals are not achieved by chance? Many of us hope so.

 

The Risk of Losing Everything by 2030

When we look at all the progress made since 2000, it becomes clear that the coherent and balanced vision, the ambitious goals, and the statistical indicators established in 2015 represent a fantastic collective treasure. These are, of course, global public goods, but in reality they are much more than that. Because they are shared by all, they are what enable the duck—pardon me, the international community—to know where it needs to go, where it is heading, and whether it is actually getting there.

This treasure is largely invisible because, with the exception of international donors, most water sector actors refer to the SDGs only symbolically and do not incorporate the SDG targets into their concrete objectives and operational activities. Even at the national level, many countries enthusiastically endorsed the SDGs in 2015 but have never sought to adapt their national policies to ensure their contributions to achieving these shared goals.

This treasure, created in 2015, holds great political value, and I am proud to have been able to make a modest contribution to it. But it is fragile, as it will disappear in 2030. It is, in fact, tied to the 2030 Agenda, which, as its name suggests, will come to an end in late 2030. The value of this collective treasure is currently greatly underestimated in international reports and debates. It is only when it disappears in 2030 that this value will become apparent to everyone.

So, of course, those familiar with the inertia of large UN structures are confident that a new global 2030–2045 agenda will be adopted and assume that this new agenda will include goals for water. This is indeed a possibility, as negotiations on post-2030 global goals will begin in July 2027. But will they succeed in the current geopolitical context? And if they do succeed, how ambitious will the water-related goals be? Will they ensure continuity of efforts by maintaining the same goals? No one knows, of course.

But the risk of failing to reach consensus on a post-2030 agenda—or of adopting a post-2030 agenda that is different and less ambitious than the 2030 Agenda—is inherently significant. Indeed, we must remember that the consensual adoption in 2015 by representatives of the entire global population of ambitious goals designed to address humanity’s greatest challenges was a historic event. This had never happened before in history. The likelihood of such an event recurring is inherently low. But obstacles have also accumulated, and the risk of a lack of consensus or reduced ambitions has become very high. There are many factors that could contribute to failure: a major country that disparages multilateralism has declared that the SDGs are contrary to its policies and interests[2]; national policymakers are not truly interested in the SDGs, preferring to communicate their progress rather than what remains to be done to achieve ambitious medium- or long-term goals; thinkers and decision-makers in 2030 will, as usual, want to do things differently from their predecessors in order to gain personal visibility without concern for maintaining continuity in goals, indicators, and actions; the many purists who see flaws in the content of the current SDG targets will want to rewrite them with the aim of improving them, without realizing that calling for a rewrite is the surest way to end up with nothing at all, since the historic consensus reached in 2015 is highly unlikely to be replicated in 2020, given the current context of severely weakened multilateralism. This could lead to a convergence of interests that ultimately results in the 2030–2045 agenda either not existing at all or being significantly scaled back, with goals and indicators that differ from those in place today.

For water, this would be a disaster, as the only global water goals currently exist within the SDG framework. Without continuity in vision, goals, and indicators, global water governance would be back to square one. This would represent a major setback (see Figure 1).

 

The insurance policy offered by the French Water Partnership

Since nothing is certain regarding the post-2030 global agenda, there is a real risk of losing the collective asset described above by the end of 2030. The French Water Partnership (PFE), which brings together French stakeholders of all kinds interested in international water issues—and which some call the French National Water Team—is deeply concerned about this potential disaster. Therefore, while fighting for the adoption of a new, ambitious post-2030 agenda that retains at least the same twenty specific water-related goals and their indicators, the French Water Partnership has devised a precautionary measure to safeguard global goals without subjecting them to a game of Russian roulette in these highly uncertain post-2030 negotiations. It recommends that the United Nations General Assembly adopt a resolution on water as early as 2027, through which it would establish global goals modeled on the existing goals without any modification and without linking them to a broader global agenda with a fixed timeframe. This is the approach taken in many areas—such as biodiversity, climate, disasters, and health—where goals were established outside the 2030 Agenda but integrated into the SDGs. The same 2027 resolution would also decide to continue statistical monitoring of water-related SDG indicators. Why 2027?

Because this could be a logical follow-up to the December 2026 Conference, provided that countries recognize the risk of losing their goals and indicators and their responsibility to secure them before the major negotiations on the post-2030 goals. Why the same goals as the SDG targets? Because opening negotiations on the content of new goals risks taking years to reach a conclusion or resulting in less ambitious goals.

I had the honor of presenting this proposal on behalf of the PFE last January in Dakar to all the governments gathered to prepare for the UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi this December.

Given the worsening water-related challenges around the world, this Conference will only be a success if it leads to progress and prevents any setbacks. Let us therefore hope that this Conference will enable States to recognize both the significant gap between the cumulative results of their national water policies and their global objectives, and their collective responsibility to intensify their efforts toward these objectives while ensuring that these objectives remain on track even after the Conference concludes.

 

Gérard Payen.

 

[1] Eau potable : que nous apprennent les statistiques mondiales au-delà des rapports officiels ?, G.Payen, Défis Humanitaires n°86 of March 6th, 2024 ; Eau potable et assainissement : Atteindre les objectifs, dans quels délais ?, G. Payen, PCM n°919 of December 2024

[2] The United States have announced their withdrawal from the UNESCO in July 2025 for 2 official reasons among which one was “The UNESCO is working to promote divisive social and cultural causes and places undue emphasis on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist and ideological agenda for international development that runs counter to our “America First” foreign policy“.

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Gérard Payen

Gérard Payen has been working for over 40 years to address water-related issues in countries around the world. As Water Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General (member of UNSGAB) from 2004 to 2015, he contributed to the recognition of the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, as well as to the adoption of numerous water-related Sustainable Development Goals. Today, he continues to work toward mobilizing the international community for better management of water-related issues, which requires more ambitious public policies. As Vice President of the French Water Partnership, he also advises United Nations agencies that produce global water statistics. Impressed by the number of misconceptions about the nature of water-related issues—misconceptions that hinder public authorities in their decision-making—he published a book in 2013 to debunk these myths.

 

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Discover the other articles of this edition :

• Humanitarian work in search for a future – Alain Boinet
• Interview with Maurice Gourdault-Montagne
• Ukraine : 4 years of commitment, one reality : energy is a humanitarian emergency – Hervé Gouyet
• Philanthropy in times of Chaos – Antoine Vaccaro
• Between political transition, identity-based tensions, and geopolitical and climate shocks : Bangladesh’s complex equation – Thierry Libeaut