UNECE will be contributing to the Seventh World Water Forum, to be held from 12 to 17 April in Daegu and Gyeongju, Republic of Korea. The Forum, the world’s largest meeting on water, is where the water community — policy and decision makers, parliamentarians, civil society and experts from around the world — come together every three years to find joint solutions to water-related problems. Under the theme “Water for Our Future”, this year’s Forum aims to identify actions and solutions to support implementation of the post-2015 development agenda on water.
UNECE is organizing several events with numerous partners in the framework of the Forum’s high-level, thematic and regional processes. These events will showcase the concrete support the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourse and International Lakes (Water Convention) and the Protocol on Water and Health offer to address the major water-related challenges our world is facing, whether local or global, in such areas as access to water for all, or the impact of climate change and water insecurity on regional stability and peace.
The United Nations Secretary-General will address a special high-level event by video message. The event, organized by UNECE, Green Cross International, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), will celebrate the opening of the Water Convention to all United Nations Member States and the entry into force in 2014 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses. These major breakthroughs in the development of international water law will support transboundary water cooperation worldwide.
Many basins around the world are already affected by the impacts of climate change, such as an increased frequency and variability of extreme weather events. Good practices in how to adapt to climate change will be presented by members of the global network of basins working on climate change adaptation, supported by the UNECE Water Convention and the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO). UNECE and INBO will launch the publication Water and Climate Change Adaptation in Transboundary Basins: Lessons Learned and Good Practices.
Activities on the water-food-energy-ecosystems nexus and on the assessment of the benefits of transboundary water cooperation, carried out under the Convention, will also be shared. The support to the implementation of the human right to water and sanitation through the activities on equitable access under the Protocol will also be presented, in particular the positive experiences in the application of the Equitable Access Score-card in several countries.
More information can be found at: www.unece.org/index.php?id=38853#/