Battling budget cuts to build change ahead of UN 2026 Water Conference

Earlier this month I attended a preparatory meeting for the UN 2026 Water Conference. Hosted by the President of the General Assembly, Philémon Yang, and held in the UN General Assembly chambers, it was an impressive setting that made me think back to my (extremely brief and unremarkable) Model UN career, studying famous speeches from Fidel Castro, John F. Kennedy, and, more recently, Malala Yousefzai.

Alas, none of those impressive rhetorical skills were on display during the meeting I attended. The day was not without a bit of drama, however, as a few countries happily used the entry point of water as an opportunity to lob (verbal) grenades at one another over their various shared-water conflicts. But apart from these diversions, the speeches were mostly benign, extolling the importance of water for sustainable development, but lacking much of the conviction and urgency demanded by the global water crisis.

The stakeholder consultations that took place on the margins of the PGA meeting, in contrast, were much more spirited and featured many youth and Global South participants who offered their perspectives on what would make a meaningful UN 2026 Water Conference. Participants also bemoaned the difficulties they faced in participating in the UN 2023 Water Conference and demanded better opportunities for access and inclusion in 2026. The 2026 Conference will once again be managed by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), which is facing a steep budget curtailment, leaving many questions about how they will meet the demands of civil society organizations who want to meaningfully engage in the process. 

Expectations are clearly very high, and the hope is that holding the conference outside of the UN Headquarters in New York, could help alleviate some of the challenges related to accreditation, visa restrictions, and meeting space constraints.

However, the UN budgetary challenges will complicate these efforts so it is important to consider alternatives to physical participation in the conference itself. Several suggestions were made regarding the inclusion of regional or preparatory interactive dialogues that could take place in the run-up to the conference, but that will once again depend on the capacity of the conference organizers.  

The Conference co-hosts, Senegal and the UAE, also participated in these meetings and requested additional feedback from all non-state actors on how they can better prepare the conference.

Since AGWA is a global network, we thought it would be good to collect additional feedback from our members to share with the UAE and Senegal.

To this end, we have created a Google Form that includes the 3 guiding questions from the stakeholder meeting. If you or your organization would like to give feedback to the conference organizers, please fill out the form and submit it to my colleague, Pan Ei Ei Phyoe, by 31 August. We will consolidate the responses and submit it to the UN and the co-hosts as a joint input.  

Ingrid Timboe
Portland, Oregon USA