Overarching Theme
Water in a Changing World: Innovation and Adaptation
The overarching theme of the XIX World Water Congress focuses on addressing the dynamic interconnections linking water, natural ecosystems, energy, agriculture and other human activities during a time of global challenges such as climate change, humanitarian and environmental crises, and political upheavals. By emphasising the need for innovation in managing water resources, the ability to adapt to shifting environmental, societal and economic demands, and the importance of ensuring resilience in water usage, governance and infrastructure, this Congress will explore and highlight how these key elements can be integrated to create sustainable, long-term solutions for water management in an increasingly changing world. The following identifies the Thematic Areas and their respective goals that will be featured at the Congress. While submissions focusing on these themes and subthemes for oral, poster, special session, and side events are welcomed, interdisciplinary, cross-cutting, and cross-thematic proposals are also highly encouraged.
Thematic Areas:
– Rural Development: Strengthen rural water infrastructure by integrating local knowledge, improving rural water access, and promoting inclusive water governance in underserved areas; harmonize the rural-urban divide to curb migration.
– Financial Solutions for Water Projects: Explore innovative and sustainable financing models, such as water tariffs, public-private partnerships, climate financing, and green bonds, to attract investments in water infrastructure and resilience projects.
– Resilience and Adaptation Strategies and Plans: Develop adaptive and inclusive water planning and governance frameworks that can respond to climate uncertainties such as floods and droughts, induced water variability, and long-term socio-environmental changes.
– Water Governance at All Levels: Strengthen water governance at all political, geographic, social, and cultural levels, including transboundary and river basin levels, through decentralised institutions and cooperative and participatory agreements and plans, that ensure equitable distribution of water resources among uses and users, avoid conflicts over vital water resource, mainstream gender equality, and ensure vital human needs.
– Partnership and Cooperation: Promote regional, cross-sectoral, and cross-border cooperation and water diplomacy to improve water management and availability, foster prosperity, and support sustainability around the world.
– Expanding Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM): Advance IWRM frameworks by promoting synergies and harmony across water, agriculture, energy, and natural ecosystems sectors to improve resource efficiency and sustainability; develop legal and institutional mechanisms to ensure transparent and accountable public participation in IWRM at different tiers of governance.
– Governance Frameworks for the WEFE: Strengthen regulatory, policy, and institutional mechanisms for intersectoral coordination and societal decision-making that enable holistic management of water, energy, food and natural ecosystems; address challenges related to goals and procedures, actors and actor networks, scales, institutions and resources, and program implementation in WEFE environments.
– Renewable Energy-Water Nexus: Explore the interlinkages between renewable energy resources and the water sector through the deployment of renewable energy to provide sustainable water solutions, and the use of water in the production of renewable energy.
– Agriculture and Water: Ensure sustainable water use in agriculture through efficient irrigation systems, fewer water-intensive crops, and climate-smart agricultural choices and operations.
– Aquatic Ecosystems and Biodiversity: Enhance resiliency in freshwater ecosystems and their watersheds through programs, investments, and collective action that protect and restore aquatic biodiversity.
– Capacity Building: Build capacity in all aspects of the WEFE Nexus among decisionmakers, academia, practitioners, and other stakeholders through training opportunities, leadership development, and investing in technology upgrades, including by enhancing data management and digitalization efforts that support the development and implementation of WEFE Nexus solutions.
– Water Disaster Management: Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity of the water sector to climate change and natural disasters; enhance integrated approaches to disaster prevention and reduction of water-related risks; develop disaster scenario analyses and preparedness plans.
– Adaptation to Droughts and Climate Risks: Develop best practices and drought management planning including drought impact mitigation;
expand opportunities to provide consistent and reliable freshwater to people, agriculture, nature, and industries and enhance community resilience against climate change.
– Desalination Development in Arid Regions: Explore opportunities to expand development of desalination knowledge, technology, and investments to alleviate growing pressures on freshwater resources and increase freshwater availability for drinking water, agriculture, industry, and other uses.
– Opportunities and Feasibility of Unconventional Water Resources: Explore the potential, technologies, methodologies, cost, needs, and consequences related to unconventional water resources such as fog, dew, and rainwater harvesting, water vapor condensation, iceberg towing, cloud seeding, and offshore groundwater extraction.
– Circular Economy Approaches: Drive the transition to a circular water economy by promoting water reuse, recycling, and wastewater treatment, especially in arid regions, to enhance availability of freshwater for agriculture, public gardens, industry, groundwater recharge, and other uses.
– Smart Water Management: Implement advanced technologies and digital solutions such as IoT and AI to improve water distribution efficiency, reduce waste, address aging infrastructure and secure water sustainability.
– Desalination, Wastewater Reuse and Recycling Technologies and Methodologies: Enhance technologies and methodologies for seawater desalination, treating, reusing, and recycling municipal, agricultural, industrial, and other forms of wastewater for different uses.
– Traditional Knowledge: Explore, respect, and value Indigenous, traditional, and community-based knowledge systems and integrate these practices into water management policies.
– Nature-Based Solutions (NBS): Scale up ecosystem-based approaches to water management by restoring natural ecosystems to enhance water availability, improve water quality, and strengthen resilience to water-related risks.
– Innovative Water Concepts: Enhance innovative water concepts in technology development and implementation.
– Groundwater Assessment: Innovate groundwater data collection methods, improve monitoring technologies, and develop policies to sustain groundwater as a key and strategic resource in water-scarce regions.
– Groundwater Data: Explore mechanisms for encouraging and facilitating open sharing of data on groundwater resources, including available storage, flow rates and directions, chemistry, aquifer characteristics, recharge and discharge values, uses and allocations, and other traits.
– Participatory Groundwater Management: Foster community and stakeholder involvement and inclusive governance in groundwater management, including in transboundary aquifer basins, to ensure equitable access and long-term sustainability.
– Integrated Surface Water and Groundwater Management: Explore the interconnectedness of surface water and groundwater systems and identify mechanisms for implementing integrated management approaches that optimize the use and sustainability of both resources within basins and across borders.
– Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR): Accelerate the adoption of MAR techniques to replenish overdrawn aquifers, develop water banking opportunities, and promote sustainable water resource management.
– Impacts of Climate Change on Groundwater Resilience: Examine the influence of climate change on groundwater recharge rates, storage capacity, and availability; identify strategies for enhancing the resilience of groundwater systems to climate variability and extreme weather events.
– Rights to Water and Sanitation: Ensure access to water, sanitation and hygiene in rural areas, cities and urban areas, notably for marginalized people, such as including refugees and those most vulnerable to climate change, epidemics, etc.
– Water & SDGs: Implement actions related to the interconnections and interdependencies between water and the SDGs, particularly SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being; SDG 5: Gender Equality; SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities; SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities; SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production; and, SDG 15: Life on Land.
– Water & Economics: Expand research on and understanding of the intertwined nature of water as a vital resource for human life and the natural environment and the impact of economic activities as reflected in resource allocation, pricing, investment, environmental degradation, climate change, and global trade in order to support the development of policies that promote sustainable water management and economic growth.
– Water & Islands: Address the specific vulnerabilities of island nations, including water scarcity, climate change impacts, and rising sea levels, through tailored resilience strategies.
– Freshwater & Oceans: Link oceans, coastal areas, and freshwater policies for a thriving blue economy across the entire water cycle.
– Monitoring, Preventing, Treating, and Decontaminating Established Pollutants: Enhance the capabilities of water quality monitoring systems, implement prevention programs and adopt innovative treatment and decontamination technologies to address known pollutants, such as agricultural runoff and industrial contaminants.
– Detecting and Mitigating Contaminants of Emerging Concern (CECs): Develop comprehensive strategies to detect and mitigate CECs, such as pharmaceuticals, personal care products, metabolites of pesticides and microplastics, which pose unique risks to water quality and ecosystem health.
– Health-Related Water Issues: Strengthen the integration of water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) programmes into public health strategies to address waterborne diseases and improve community health; use untreated wastewater to detect pathogens in support of the One-Health approach in Public and Environmental Health Monitoring.
– Climate Change and Water Quality Resilience: Explore the water quality impacts of climate change on freshwater resources, including rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, and extreme weather events, and consider adaptive strategies to enhance the resilience of water systems and safeguard water quality under climate variability.
– Water Quality Impacts on Biodiversity: Explore the interconnection between water quality and the health of freshwater ecosystems, identify impacts of contaminants on aquatic flora and fauna, and develop strategies to protect biodiversity.