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The UN 2023 Water Conference and pathways towards sustainability transformation for a water-secure world

Nature Water volume 1, pages 212–215 (2023)Cite this article

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Transforming how we understand, value and manage water towards water security and resilience will accelerate progress in achieving the 2030 Agenda. On 22–24 March 2023, a unique United Nations (UN) Conference on water will be held, uniting the world for water. We reflect on this once-in-generation opportunity, and how it can spillover a just and sustainable transformation across all sectors and governance levels.

Over the last 20 years, 4.5 billion people were affected by the direct impacts of natural hazards1. Over 90% of all disruptive events between 1998 and 2017 were climate-related disasters. Recent reports have described the dramatic effects of the current global climate crisis all around the globe2, which, together with other global crises (for example, financial crises, resource scarcity, pandemics, war and nuclear risk), constitute the global risk landscape in which we live.

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Fig. 1

The vision and principles that informed the UN2023 Water Conference’s process by Marieke van der Velden, www.eyeopeners.eu

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Groningen, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Henk Ovink & Angelo Jonas Imperiale

  2. Special Envoy for International Water Affairs, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Henk Ovink

  3. Special Envoy of the President for Water and Climate, Dushanbe, Tajikistan

    Sulton Rahimzoda

  4. Presidency of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, NY, USA

    Johannes Cullman

  5. IHE-Delft, Institute for Water Education, Delft, The Netherlands

    Angelo Jonas Imperiale

  6. University of Melbourne, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Melbourne, Australia

    Angelo Jonas Imperiale

Authors
  1. Henk Ovink
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  2. Sulton Rahimzoda
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  3. Johannes Cullman
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  4. Angelo Jonas Imperiale
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Henk Ovink, Sulton Rahimzoda, Johannes Cullman or Angelo Jonas Imperiale.

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Competing interests

The authors H.O., S.R., and J.C. had (and still have) a leading role in the co-organization of the Water Conference and of the participatory meetings leading up to the conference.

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Ovink, H., Rahimzoda, S., Cullman, J. et al. The UN 2023 Water Conference and pathways towards sustainability transformation for a water-secure world. Nat Water 1, 212–215 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00052-1

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