From the UN 2023 Water Conference to COP28 – a “watershed moment” to Bridge the Divide between Food and Water Systems Resilience!

In March of this year, nearly 10,000 people gathered in New York City for the first UN water conference in 46 years. Co-hosted by The Netherlands and Tajikistan, the conference was attended by Government representatives, members of the United Nations system, intergovernmental organizations, international financial institutions, non-governmental organizations, civil society actors, academic institutions, scientific and research communities, the private sector, and philanthropic organizations, who gathered to address the multiple challenges and opportunities related to global water security and the achievement of SDG 6. 

There was so much interest in this meeting that the 3-day conference was extended into a full week of events under the banner of New York Water Week. While there was no negotiated outcome or binding resolution, by the final day participants had made over 700 voluntary pledges and collectively committed hundreds of billions of dollars to addressing the global water crisis. As a participant myself, I left the conference feeling energized and inspired, while at the same time feeling like there were some missed opportunities. One of those missed opportunities was to begin to bridge the divide between water and food systems. Thankfully, we have a unique opportunity to do so later this year.  

In December, governments will meet again in Dubai for the annual UN Climate Conference (“COP28”). This year’s meeting is of particular importance, as it will feature the outcome of the first Stock take of global climate action under the Paris Agreement. This two-year process is designed to understand how far the world has come in meeting its mitigation and adaptation targets. We already know that the world is not moving fast enough and that major gaps remain to reduce vulnerability and build climate resilience. The Stock take provides an opportunity to better understand these gaps and collaborate on real solutions.

To this end, the COP28 host country, the United Arab Emirates, has set several priorities for this year’s conference. Two of those are food and water security, and the UAE recently announced a joint Presidency Day focused on the nexus between them. The food and water sectors are inseparably linked, however, they are too often governed and managed independently, which can have catastrophic results when combined with increasing water variability due to climate change. 

For example, recent floods combined with long-term groundwater depletion and chronic mismanagement have greatly undercut Pakistan’s ability to reliably produce the food needed to feed its growing population. While in Southwest North America, overallocation of the Colorado River combined with a twenty-year megadrought have imperiled important agricultural operations throughout the lower basin. Add on top of this a global food crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, supply chain shocks due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ongoing economic and environmental fallout from rapid biodiversity loss and we are left with a global food production system facing severe stress.   

At both the UN 2023 Water Conference and at previous COPs, leaders have called for systemic solutions to addressing the water, food, and climate crises. Agriculture is by far the biggest water user worldwide, but the international food systems community was poorly represented at the water conference. By explicitly linking food and water in the official agenda for COP28, the UAE is offering us another chance.  

In order to take advantage of this opportunity we must rethink our approach to food and water management by embracing change, complexity, and circularity to create water-resilient food systems. Yet integrated management alone is not sufficient. We need a transformation in mindset. As several of my colleagues wrote in a recent article for the journal Water Security, “we must embrace uncertainty, long-term thinking, feedback loops and understanding of food systems as social-ecological systems, with water a key leverage point for transforming them into resilient systems.” This type of transformation is not simply theoretical, it is being practiced in communities worldwide from Vietnam to India, Spain, and South Africa.

Building on the conversations started in New York, we now have the opportunity to elevate food and water to the very top of the climate agenda and to demonstrate how governments, cities, corporations, and local communities are working together to implement real solutions. Local and regional knowledge centers, such as the FAO’s Water Scarcity Programme (WSP) for Asia-Pacific, or the Centers of Distinction on Indigenous and Local Knowledge (COD-ILK) can and will contribute to this transformation. AGWA will be working with many of our partners – including FAO – to help bring multi-sector resilience thinking to COP28 and beyond. 

To learn more about AGWA’s work on global climate and water policy and get involved in this work, check out our website www.alliance4water.org.

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Ingrid Timboe is the Policy Director for the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA). She first joined AGWA's Secretariat in 2017 to help coordinate AGWA and SIWI's organization of Water Action Day at COP23 and has been engaged in international climate and water policy ever since, leading AGWA’s work with the UNFCCC and many others. In addition, she co-hosts the ClimateReady podcast with Alex Mauroner.