Threat of increasing water scarcity: global action plan in place

Sufficient drinking water, long droughts and dried-up lakes? Scenarios you've probably only seen on TV. However, what seems far away for us is already a reality of life in many countries around the world. Added to this is climate change: it will further exacerbate the situation in the arid regions of the earth - and in future will also bring the problem to areas that do not yet suffer from water shortages.

UN Water Conference 2023

The need for action is therefore no longer up for debate. And so the first major international water summit since 1977 took place from 22 to 24 March with over 10,000 representatives. The result: an agenda with almost 700 voluntary commitments.

Switzerland was represented by Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis and water researchers from Eawag. They presented projects focussing on partnership-based action in terms of urban water management. Germany would like to support drinking water management in many African countries and orientate its own national water strategy towards sustainable management. Many parts of Africa and Latin America are working together to save threatened and degraded rivers and wetlands.

A follow-up conference in two years' time will examine whether the objectives of the Water Action Plan are being implemented.

Time to rethink

In the end, a unanimous decision emerges from many different projects: take action. Lively participation and solution-oriented discussions showed that there is a turning point in dealing with the global topic of water. Even the countries that were previously spared are realising the increasing scarcity of supplies. The action plan is therefore an important step - even if there was a firm financial commitment for less than a third of the initiatives.