Global Stakeholders Gather for First Preparations Ahead of 2026 UN Water Conference

The Conference (2-4 December 2026 in UAE) will consist of plenary sessions and six interactive dialogues. The session offered delegates the opportunity to make recommendations to the General Assembly on the theme of the Interactive Dialogues. For greater impact across global processes, consistency and continuity are important factors. Maintaining the same overall Interactive Dialogue themes will continue to build momentum from the UN 2023 Water Conference, a position shared by the majority of delegates in the session, including SIWI and AGWA. 

The proposals for the additional sixth Interactive Dialogue theme covered a range of topics such as finance, capacity building, technology, data and governance. This reflected SIWI’s and AGWA’s proposal that the 6th theme should focus on inclusivity and enabling environments, guided by the accelerators identified in the SDG6 Global Acceleration Framework (GAF).

During the High-Level Opening remarks, representatives of the Conference co-hosts: H. E. Dr. Cheikh Tidiane Dieye, Minister of Hydraulics and Sanitation, Senegal and H. E. Mr. Abdulla Balalaa, Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs for Energy and Sustainability, United Arab Emirates provided urgent and vital framing for the day’s discussions as well as their vision for the Conference. A vision rooted in concrete actions and investments to advance the implementation of SDG6. 

One of the key outcomes of the UN 2023 Water Conference was the appointment of Mrs. Retno L.P. Marsudi as the inaugural Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Water. Calls for an envoy cited the need to elevate water on the global agenda, which she echoed in her remarks. She called for Advocacy, Alignment and Acceleration of actions, highlighting that water needs to be kept a priority far beyond the Conference, the Water Action Decade, and the 2030 Agenda. 

Supporting this call for greater coherence, several delegations including the European Union, called for the establishment of an intergovernmental process on water to extend through 2028 (end of the Water Action Decade) and beyond, with regular mandated Conferences. While there was no consensus on this, it acts as confirmation of the growing prioritization of water on the global agenda and the growing demand for action from Member States and the UN system. The EU also made a strong plea to the importance of implementation and reaffirmed its 33 commitments made under the Water Action Agenda. 

Cooperation for peace, prosperity and progress

Switzerland on behalf of The Transboundary Water Cooperation Coalition explicitly called for transboundary water cooperation, with an emphasis on water diplomacy for conflict prevention and peace, to be included as one of the themes of the 2026 UN Water Conference, as in 2023. Other delegations calling for a focus on transboundary cooperation include Angola, Chile, Pakistan, France, Lesotho, Namibia and Thailand. UNCDF shared their Blue Peace Financing Initiative as an example of a concrete solution in which transboundary cooperation mobilizes finance while building peace. Leveraging existing processes and solutions that can act as a springboard is key to enabling larger and faster transformations and mobilize everyone along the way. 

This is especially relevant to the framework for a continuation of Interactive Dialogue 3 from the 2023 Conference, which focused on Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment. Here, Governments, NGOs and IGOs can come together and create synergies between UN processes such as the Baku Dialogue for Water and Climate Action and across the 3 Rio conventions and the Ramsar convention. Fora like World Water Week and the Water for Climate Pavilion at UNFCCC COPs offer an inclusive platform for such collaboration ahead of the 2026 Conference and beyond.

Enabling factors for accelerating progress 

The calls for technology and innovation to have a dedicated Interactive Dialogue came from several countries, including the 2023 co-hosts, the Republic of Tajikistan and the Kingdom of the Netherlands who shared their vision for a 6th Interactive Dialogue focused on technology and innovation as enablers of progress. Many speakers also emphasised the far reaching impact of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: food security, gender equality, climate action and water as key to economic resilience and prosperity.  This framing is strongly mirrored in the EU’s new Water Resilience Strategy, and is aligned with our efforts towards building water-resilient economies that will endure and thrive amid a shifting climate. We strongly support the inclusion of economy-wide water solutions as part of the action agenda coming out of the UN 2026 Water conference.  

Inclusivity 

Participants voiced the importance of having an inclusive and multistakeholder process in the lead up and during the Conference. A group of non state actors representing an outreach of 1.5 million stakeholders, covering 100+ countries, also echoed SIWI’s and AGWA’s suggestions of adopting a specific and transparent process to foster wide and collaborative participation. This includes opening up possibilities for increased accreditation, a funding mechanism to enable active participation of women water experts, Indigenous water experts and next generation water leaders, collect disaggregated data to create indicators for monitoring and participation goals, and ensure that parallel preparation meetings / inputs from non-state-actors especially CSO/ NGOs feed directly into the dialogue(s) and/ or web-based survey beforehand.

The world and its leaders must focus on building systemic economic resilience to ensure that water systems can adequately support the achievement of all the SDGs and prepare our cities, food and energy systems, and ecosystems with the resources, tools, and technologies needed to meet future water needs for all and ensuring a just transition in all areas. As Ms. Retno L.P. Marsudi, Special Envoy for Water, highlighted, ´…in this situation, our only option is to work five-times and 6x harder to put concrete actions for our water. The UN 2026 Water Conference is one of the means to do that and it will push for progress in the global water agenda`.