Global Trends Report: Navigating Water Resilience in a Changing World
The world around us is changing fast. There have been rollbacks of funding and commitment, shifts in policy and investment and reviews and revoking of established legislation.
These shifting landscapes come as the global climate crisis deepens.
But we can be proactive about shaping the direction it takes. Starting with how we view water: not just as a casualty of climate change but as a critical pathway to resilience.
And in resilience there is opportunity.
This Global Trends Report, prepared by the global Water Resilience Tracker team, offers a timely guide climate and water resilience, highlighting policy, finance, and institutional challenges.
It exposes real-world barriers and opportunities to water resilience, emphasizing urgent, collective action.
It should be used to inform decisions, shape action, and inspire greater ambition from all who share our commitment to a water-secure and climate-resilient future. In order to stay on top or ahead of the global trends, the report will be updated annually.
Here are some of the key trends shared in the 2025 report:
Water’s role in global climate governance is growing but further strengthening is needed.
Water is now increasingly recognised within UNFCCC processes, particularly through COP outcomes and the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). However, systemic water resilience still needs to be further embedded within national commitments such as NDCs, NAPs, and Biennial Transparency Reports (BTRs), limiting countries' ability to track and deliver tangible progress.
The global water-climate finance landscape remains fragmented, insufficient, and difficult to access.
Despite the existence of major climate funds and development finance institutions, structural barriers — such as weak institutional capacity, data gaps, and unclear pathways for private sector engagement — continue to prevent many countries, especially LDCs and SIDS, fromaccessing the finance needed to build water resilience.
The WRT fills a critical gap by providing actionable tools, system-based indicators, and country-led technical support.
The Water Resilience Tracker enables countries to integrate water resilience into national policy processes and investment planning, ensuring alignment with global frameworks while addressing locally specific risks.
Opportunities exist to strengthen global and national progress on water resilience.
These include shaping the final set of GGA indicators to better capture systemic water resilience, supporting improved national reporting through BTRs and Long-Term Strategies (LTSs), and catalysing finance by demonstrating readiness and providing technical assistance.