UN Adopts Comprehensive Themes for 2026 Water Conference
Mrs. Retno L.P. Marsudi, Special Envoy on Water addresses Preparatory Meeting of 2026 UN Water Conference
The UN General Assembly has formally adopted six thematic areas for the 2026 United Nations Water Conference. AGWA welcomes the themes as they establish a robust framework that directly supports our core mission: building systemic water resilience in an era marked by a shifting climate.
The consensus adoption of these themes creates an unprecedented opportunity to advance water adaptation strategies at the global level:
Water for people: the human rights to water and sanitation, including for those in vulnerable situations, for healthy societies and economies;
Water for prosperity: valuing water, water-energy-food nexus, advancing integrated and sustainable water resource management, wastewater and water-use efficiency across sectors, and economic and social development;
Water for planet: climate, biodiversity, desertification, environment, source to sea, resilience and disaster risk reduction;
Water for cooperation: transboundary and international water cooperation, including scientific cooperation, and inclusive governance;
Water in multilateral processes: Sustainable Development Goal 6, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and beyond, and global water initiatives;
Investments for water: financing, technology and innovation, and capacity-building.
These themes build on the interactive dialogues at 2023’s Conference and come after a long consultative process with Member States and stakeholders. AGWA’s Deputy Executive Director, Ingrid Timboe attended the July 9 event to deliver a statement on behalf of AGWA and has been following the preparatory process closely. She shares her reflections on the themes:
The adopted themes align closely with the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation's mandate to strengthen water security in the face of climate change.
We welcome the broadening of the Water for Planet interactive dialogue (formerly Water for Climate, Resilience and Environment) which will enable the utilization of existing processes and platforms as catalysts for more substantial and rapid transformations, engaging all stakeholders. Governments, NGOs, and IGOs can foster synergies among UN processes like the Baku Dialogue for Water and Climate Action, the three Rio Conventions, and the Ramsar Convention. This can be further strengthened by leveraging formal and informal complementary platforms, to ensure continuous progress on the Interactive Dialogues leading up to and beyond December 2026.
The "source-to-sea" approach theme explicitly addresses environmental and climate considerations, providing a platform to discuss adaptive management strategies across entire water systems. Similarly, the emphasis on integrated and sustainable water resource management directly supports the Alliance's focus on building resilient water infrastructure and governance systems through ongoing programmes such as the Water Resilience Tracker.
We need to leverage existing processes and platforms that can act as a springboard to enable larger and faster transformations and mobilize everyone along the way. This is especially relevant to the framework for Interactive Dialogue 3, where, together, Governments, NGOs and IGOs can 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, as well as utilising formal and informal complementary platforms to continue progress on IDs ahead of and beyond December 2026.
The all-new Investments for Water interactive dialogue is a vital addition encompassing financial investment as well as capacity building with a well-needed focus on inclusivity and enabling environments. This will help ensure that the outcomes of the Investments for Water interactive dialogue enhance water action across all interactive dialogues and integrate the Global Acceleration Framework, especially financing, into workplans and outcome documents.
The recently adopted themes for the 2026 UN Water Conference are aligned with AGWA’s mission to build societal water resilience for people, economies and the planet. However, we encourage the co-hosts and co-chairs to think beyond 2030. The UN 2026 Conference can be the catalyst for what comes next - we need to ensure that our water systems are fit for purpose not only in 2030 but in 2050 and beyond.
We believe that the Interactive Dialogues (IDs) and the priorities they encompass should serve as a frame for this vision and help to mobilize global action towards our collective future.
While we welcome the overarching dialogue themes, in particular the emphasis on systemic water resilience, more must be done to refine the scope and proposed impact of each to reflect a more interconnected, resource-intensive, and unpredictable world. We look forward to working with the global water community to push for a bold vision for the future when we meet again in Abu Dhabi next year.
The 2026 conference, co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Senegal, will take place from December 2-4, 2026, providing a crucial platform for advancing global water action strategies through these newly adopted thematic frameworks.
Read AGWA’s Statement delivered at United Nations, New York, 9 July 2025