Last week, AquaFed, represented by its vice-president Cyril Courjaret, was part of the “On the Road to the UN 2026 Water Conference” informal consultation, organized by the governments of UAE and Senegal. Our opinion on many topics was asked, so here is a summary.
The United Nations are organizing their next Water Conference in 2026, co-hosted by the UAE and Senegal. To properly prepare the conference, the two countries are organizing a series of consultations with key stakeholders and the global water community. The objective of these consultations is to identify the water-related priorities and ambitions to be addressed during the 2026 event.
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According to us, the ultimate success indicator for the Conference is progress on SDG6 targets – before, during and after the conference. To achieve that success, our vision for the is that it is a catalyst for immediate progress on Water Action Agenda Commitments. This work must start now, with the event itself being a reporting milestone on progress and essentially a ‘deal-maker’ for further collaborations to 2030.
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We would advise the governments of the UAE and Senegal to not encourage any more ‘commitments or commitment frameworks. There are hundreds of them and a wide array for frameworks, but these t have not achieved the pace of progress on SDG6 that we all want. Equally, there is no need for any more political declarations. The sector itself is tired and weary of these and they have not served to raise the importance and value of water outside the sector.
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Instead, the 2026 Conference process should be about driving collaboration and progress on existing commitments. It should be a ‘marketplace for partnership’ with the focus only on brokering partnerships, backed by pooling and crowding-in existing finance and resources, to deliver actual progress on Water Action Agenda Commitments.
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Another success factor will be the level of involvement of representatives from other sectors – energy, health, climate change for example.
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To summarize, the outcomes we want to see are deals. By deals we mean partnerships backed with resources that achieve existing Action Agenda Commitments. The upcoming conference should be focused on being a marketplace for multi-stakeholder partnership deals, where everyone brings skills and resources to the table.