Empowering global water governance: taking the 2023 UN Water Conference outcomes forward to address the current water crises

Herrfahrdt-Pahle, E., Houdret, A., Dombrowsky, I., Cullman, J., Mukherji, A., Unver, O. and Varady, R. 2025. Empowering global water governance: taking the 2023 UN Water Conference outcomes forward to address the current water crises. Water International 50(1):4-10. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508060.2025.2452108

The planet-wide water crisis manifests itself in limited access, overuse, pollution, droughts and flooding. It requires recognizing water as a global commons and improving global water governance. To achieve this, the UN as the only inclusive and global platform for policy development needs increased political commitment and lasting support.

Global water governance is largely fragmented, incoherent and mired in a virtual dead end since the first United Nations conference on water in 1977 (Herrfahrdt-Pähle et al., Citation2019). Geopolitical rivalries, domestic politics, sovereignty issues and, not least, inertia, hinder efforts. Current measures do not suffice for addressing the global water crisis or achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 on water and the water-related SDGs (e.g., food, health and climate). To reach SDG 6, the rate of implementation will need to increase sixfold for access to safe drinking water and fivefold for access to sanitation (United Nations, Citation2023a). Implementation challenges include lack of clear vision and political commitment, but also paucity of coordination and financing, weak institutional and professional capacity, insufficient data-sharing and monitoring and outdated and ineffective legal frameworks (UNEP, Citation2021). Additionally, climate change and global trade require governments to overcome the established culture of seeing water mostly within national borders or river basins.

Despite these challenges, potential benefits of improved global water governance are obvious, as also highlighted by the United Nations Secretary General in the 2023 United Nations Water Conference. Expectations for this conference – the first in 46 years – were high. The event aimed to collectively develop and implement a transformative Water Action Agenda, while spawning several game-changing initiatives (United Nations, Citation2023c). Despite some concerns, e.g., regarding civil society representation, the follow-up of the conference resulted in a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, which included the development of a United Nations System-wide Strategy for Water and Sanitation, the appointment of an envoy for water and the agreement on the next two occasions of the global community for discussing water and sustainable development: the 2026 United Nations Water Conference to accelerate the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals 6, and the 2028 United Nations Conference on the Final Comprehensive Review of the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Decade for Action – without explicitly focusing on governance, however (United Nations General Assembly, Citation2023). In the following, we review the impact of the 2023 United Nations Water Conference, identify four areas of concern and assess how they were addressed. For each area, we put forward recommendations on how to advance and improve global water governance as inputs to the upcoming United Nations Water Conference in 2026.