We need to talk about resilience.

Water resilience isn't optional for communities, economies, and ecosystems. Ignoring resilience will lead to increasingly severe consequences. Embracing resilience unlocks opportunity, funding, and prosperity. A future worth fighting for. 

We head to COP30 as climate mitigation processes face pushback. In some national areas – from forest carbon to clean energy – the direction is shifting. At the same time lower costs associated with clean energy are driving its uptake in the private sector and corporate investment. Discussions around climate finance, while important, are hitting firm political limits.

This is where resilience rises as an agenda. Not least because it serves as a mechanism for economic security and social stability – goals that transcend political divides.

The discussions around Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) address resilience, but many venture no further than reducing risk. 

AGWA's broader agenda –and tools like the Water Resilience Tracker – goes further, focusing not only on risk reduction but on the larger question: how do we find ways to prosper and thrive in a time of global uncertainty? In a time of worsening climate change, political and governance shifts, trade and economic disruption. Data centers are exposed to climate change yet often not thinking about it, while their impact on economies and ecosystems is on a scale comparable to climate change, especially at local and grid levels. Resilience provides a powerful framework for addressing all of these issues in a coherent way.

Since our inception, AGWA has seen water as so much more than a risk or a hazard. It's a way of defining connections between sectors and institutions and policies, between economies and ecosystems. Water-centric resilience ensures coherence across all of these topics.

We can reduce risk. But we can also do a lot more. 

As the conversations at COP30 shift towards these broader issues, water resilience offers a practical path forward. 

Solutions exist. Financing mechanisms exist. What's missing is a shift in mindset: to see resilience not as a burden, but as a necessary  lever to build prosperity in uncertain times.