UN Water Conference opens Wednesday to address challenges to countries fighting water scarcity

UNITED NATIONS : The first UN Water Conference in almost five decades begins in New York Wednesday to deal with water-related challenges — an event of crucial importance to Pakistan, which is listed on top of countries battling water scarcity.

Co-hosted by the Netherlands and Tajikistan, the three-day conference is being portrayed by UN experts as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to accelerate progress towards universal access to safe water and sanitation by 2030.

It also marks the halfway point through the International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development”, adopted by the UN General Assembly on World Water Day – 22 March 2018 – to help put a greater focus on water

“The conference will be an occasion to unite the global community to take action and address the broad challenges surrounding water,” according to Li Junhua, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and the Secretary-General of the conference.

A main outcome of the Conference will be a Water Action Agenda that will capture the ambitious new commitments from Member States and other stakeholders, he said.

The Conference is set to bring together Heads of State and Government, Ministers, and other high-level representatives of governments and the UN system.

Pakistan will be represented by a four-member delegation, including Hassan Nasir Jamy, secretary of the Ministry of Water Resources.

In an earlier event, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram, while underscoring the conference’s importance, had said that “Because of climate change and other developments, we suffer from floods during the summers and drought in the winter repeatedly.”

Around 3.6 billion people struggle to get enough water to meet their needs for at least one month every year, according to the World Meteorological Organization, a Geneva-based UN agency.

Water is at the core of sustainable development, the UN said, adding it supports all aspects of life on Earth, and access to safe and clean water is a basic human right. “However, decades of mismanagement and misuse have intensified water stress, threatening the many aspects of life that depend on this crucial resource.”

Many water sources are becoming more polluted, and ecosystems that provide water are disappearing, it was pointed out, and climate change is disrupting the water cycle, causing droughts and floods.

The conference will include an opening and closing session, six plenary sessions, and five interactive dialogues, as well as side events organized by participants. It will result in a summary of proceedings from the UNGA President that will feed into the 2023 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).