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Climate policy is inundating the SDGs

Nature Water volume 1, pages 216–218 (2023)Cite this article

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As climate-induced shocks and stresses increasingly occupy media attention, funding, national and global policy, and technical practice are shifting towards alignment with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC’s) Paris Agreement and away from the more narrowly sectoral Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Water resilience is emerging as a critical delivery mechanism for the Paris Agreement as the importance of adaptation and resilience accelerates. The SDGs, in contrast, have been unable to make use of either water resources or climate resilience as enabling tools for cross-sectoral integration and development coherence.

Our vision of economic development is at a transition point. The 2023 United Nation Water Conference (UNWC) contains five ‘dialogues’ that represent a traditional approach to development. These dialogues reiterate long-standing demands for additional data, funding, political support, integration with other sectors, ecological preservation, and technology, all delivered through improved governance. While these points are valid, these issues could have been presented at the first UN water conference in 1977. Indeed, this year’s conference risks not highlighting or capturing insights from new, disruptive, or synergistic narratives about water, especially those that challenge silos and may inform emerging water-related issues. The emphasis on framing water through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may even serve as an obstacle to reaching new political and technical audiences given that the 2030 agenda neglects many connections between SDGs, especially how particular targets may be contingent on, enabled by, or even competing with other goals. Arguably the most disruptive driver for the SDGs and the water community in recent decades comes from climate change, which will be a minor topic in one UNWC dialogue.

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Fig. 1: Malheur National Wildlife refuge in North America’s Great Basin.

John H. Matthews

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank I. Timboe for her comments on an earlier draft.

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  1. Alliance for Global Water Adaptation, Corvallis, OR, USA

    John H. Matthews

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Correspondence to John H. Matthews.

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Competing interests

J.H.M. worked as an advisor to the Asian Development Bank and World Bank on water and climate change issues. He is currently working with a coalition of national party, private sector, and NGO groups on a set of cases and recommendations to articulate water resilience as an operational economic concept, which is funded by the Kingdom of the Netherlands, GIZ, and the Kingdom of Spain.

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Matthews, J.H. Climate policy is inundating the SDGs. Nat Water 1, 216–218 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00048-x

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