Water at the Core of the Global Agenda.

 

Water is the foundation of human development and planetary stability. It underpins food and energy production, public health, resilient livelihoods, ecosystem integrity, human security, and social and political stability. When water systems fail, the consequences cascade through economies and societies: crops fail, power grids falter, diseases spread, cities become unlivable, farmers lose jobs, communities are forced to move, conflicts arise, and peace and security are compromised. This centrality is captured explicitly in Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6), which commits the world to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”. But SDG 6 is also deeply interconnected with almost every other SDG. Progress on poverty reduction, health, education, gender equality, resilient cities, climate action, life below water and life on land all depend, directly or indirectly, on the stability and integrity of human–water systems. For years, global policy debates have recognized that water is “everybody’s business”. Yet, water governance and water-related decision-making remain fragmented. Water is featured in climate negotiations, biodiversity protection frameworks, and desertification debates of the UN Rio Conventions, and is central to development planning and infrastructure investments. But it is still too often addressed through separate sectoral lenses and institutionally siloed processes. This fragmentation obscures a simple fact: the condition of water systems now constrains our collective ability to deliver on the entire 2030 Agenda. The scale of unmet basic needs underscores this gap between rhetoric and reality while 2.2 billion people lack safely managed drinking water and 3.5 billion lack safely managed sanitation. Even where services exist, they are often fragile. Around 6.1 billion people live in areas that are water-insecure or critically water-insecure. Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, floods and droughts affected billions of people worldwide and together accounted for the majority of disaster events and impacts on people³. Water insecurity is therefore not an isolated development challenge but a systemic constraint on the entire 2030 Agenda.

Baseline vulnerability of different nations to water-related challenges. This index reflects the susceptibility of a region to water-related challenges, considering its environmental, social, and economic conditions. Map produced based on data from Water Resources Vulnerability Monitor