COAG endorsed FAO to initiate a “Global Dialogue on Water Tenure"
The Committee on Agriculture’s (COAG) 28th session started on Monday 18 July 2022, and the event will take place until 22 July. As one of FAO’s Governing Bodies, COAG provides overall policy and regulatory guidance on issues relating to agriculture, livestock, food safety, nutrition, rural development and natural resource management.
This year, one of the topics on the agenda was the “Governance of tenure of water resources for food and agriculture”. The Committee’s discussion on water tenure took place on Monday 18 July and continued the next morning. Ms Maria Helena Semedo, FAO’s Deputy Director-General and Mr Lifeng Li, FAO’s Director of the Land and Water Division also took part in the meeting.
As a result of the meeting, the Committee acknowledged the importance of FAO’s initiatives, within its mandate, to understand the complexity of water rights, sustainable water management, and allocation systems and to identify actionable and context-specific avenues to improve the governance of water tenure.
The Committee also recommended FAO undertake an assessment of existing water tenure arrangements and their components, building on FAO’s existing work to date, and to support Members in building and developing capacities to produce data on available and actual use of water resources for agriculture, in close collaboration with UN relevant agencies to support Members, upon request.
In addition, the Committee recommended FAO, in close collaboration with relevant UN agencies, initiate a “Global Dialogue on Water Tenure”, on matters that include water rights’ administration; tenure arrangements within water user organizations and to provide regular updates to the Committee on Agriculture, and encouraged Members to participate in series of exchanges between countries as regional and global levels, including through the “Global Dialogue on Water Tenure”, to identify principles for the responsible governance of water tenure.
With these and the rest of the recommendations, FAO will continue its work with water tenure for food security, climate resilience and equity, among others.
>>> Learn more about Water Tenure
>>> Read the Discussion paper "Governance of tenure of water resources for food and agriculture"