Water progress at basin scale is shaped by the daily decisions of those who manage water on the ground. Farmers play a decisive operational role in determining whether coordination efforts translate into measurable outcomes for communities facing increasing water stress.
Many collective action platforms succeed in convening actors, yet struggle to institutionalize delivery capacity over time. Advancing water security requires moving beyond agreements toward delivery systems that sustain implementation, particularly in regions where climate-exposed farming families depend on predictable water availability to sustain their livelihoods.
As initiatives mature, basin diagnostics deepen, shared measurement systems strengthen, and corporate commitments increasingly align with basin realities. Still, continuity often remains fragile.
This panel examines how farmer engagement can anchor durable basin delivery systems when companies operating at different scales, basin authorities, and financing actors align within a shared governance space.
Drawing on implementation in Mexico, the session presents a Basin Delivery System Framework, including a practical diagnostic matrix that helps actors assess structural delivery gaps across three dimensions: operational integration and governance embedding. It reflects on how design assumptions were refined through implementation to sustain measurable outcomes, strengthen water reliability, and reduce climate-related vulnerability in exposed rural communities.

This session will demonstrate how adaptation pathways can drive real action across vastly different water challenges. Drawing on the Severn 2100 pilot, Singapore’s North-West Coastal Protection Study, DC Water’s long-term resources planning, and Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty methods with C40 Cities, speakers will show how a range of adaptive approaches can be applied to fluvial, coastal, and urban water systems - while still producing practical, buildable interventions strengthening human development.
The session will unpack how each pathway or approach was developed: defining system boundaries, engaging stakeholders, assessing scenarios, and identifying actions with the highest adaptive value. Presenters will highlight how these pathways translate into specific schemes, such as flood storage areas, nature-based interventions, coastal alignments, resilience upgrades, and demand-management programmes. They will explore how sequencing, triggers, and thresholds can help decide when those schemes should be delivered.
Following the presentations, a panel discussion will dig deeper into the realities of delivery, including governance barriers, funding needs, stakeholder alignment, data gaps, and how monitoring frameworks guide decision-making over time. By bridging methods with lived realities, the session will highlight how robust planning can expand safe water access, reduce inequity, and strengthen human development even in a rapidly changing climate.

Capital follows returns, and in rural water, where revenues are unpredictable, tariffs are politically constrained, and currencies are volatile, private investor appetite disappears fast. The sector is not short of innovative projects. It is short of replicable models that can attract and sustain private finance at scale.
This session explores how philanthropic capital can unlock private finance through four distinct approaches: building investable enterprises, converting impact into revenue, creating new environmental revenue streams, and opening access to institutional investors. Drawing on Aguaconsult and Conrad N. Hilton Foundation's latest research and four real-world case studies (MajiFund, SIINC, carbon credits, and Peru's Blue Bond), the session brings together practitioners and funders to discuss what these models can realistically achieve, where they work, and the conditions needed to move from isolated transactions to scalable markets. 

The workshop will examine how institutionalising operation and maintenance financing within national water utilities, while strengthening sustainable financing mechanisms for rural water services, can safeguard service continuity and long-term sustainability.

In Madagascar, JIRAMA currently allocates less than the budget required to adequately cover O&M costs. This financing gap exposes systems, particularly in secondary towns, to frequent breakdowns that disproportionately affect low-income households least able to absorb service disruptions. Rural water services face similar sustainability challenges, where long-term operation and maintenance often depend on a combination of community participation, delegated management, digital monitoring and innovative financing mechanisms beyond traditional public budgets.

 The session will present:

• technical and financial evidence on the real costs of sustaining reliable water services;

• ongoing government efforts to pilot a dedicated O&M budget line within the 2027 national utility budget; 

• and the political and fiscal challenges associated with securing long-term commitments.

• lessons from rural Madagascar on sustainable O&M financing through Multiple Use Systems (MUS), public-private partnerships, digital monitoring and community-based service delivery.

Participants from different countries and institutions will exchange experiences on:

• the limitations of tariff reforms in contexts of affordability constraints;

• strategies for protecting vulnerable users;

• the role of blended finance, public-private partnerships and development partnerships;

• and practical pathways for institutionalizing sustainable O&M financing.

The workshop will conclude with a peer exchange aimed at identifying actionable recommendations and partnership opportunities to strengthen resilient, equitable and financially sustainable urban and rural water service delivery.

Climate change, urbanization, and pollution are intensifying the pressure on water systems, exposing limitations in how water is currently managed. A critical barrier is the persistent disconnect between water resources management (WRM) and water and sanitation services (WSS), which continue to operate in parallel institutional, financial, and planning frameworks despite their interdependence.

Decisions taken at basin level - on allocation, land use, and water quality - directly determine the viability of water and sanitation services. At the same time, wastewater discharges and service delivery choices shape associated ecosystems and resource availability. Yet coordination between these domains remains limited, undermining water security, public health, and climate resilience.

This session focuses on enabling stronger linkages between WRM and WSS through practical approaches that address key coordination challenges: planning across scales and sectors, navigating institutional and power dynamics, and aligning financing and investments. Through diverse case studies - from basin planning and participatory processes to data integration and water circularity - the session highlights how coordinated actions can improve outcomes across the full water cycle.

Through interactive audience engagement we will be identifying entry points and discussing solutions to operationalize WRM-WSS coordination across different contexts, scales and stakeholders.

WASH services in schools and health care facilities are foundational for health, learning outcomes, dignity, and gender equality—directly supporting SDGs 3, 4, 5, and 6. While investments have improved infrastructure coverage, too many institutions still face unreliable, low-quality, or unsafe services due to gaps in governance, financing, monitoring, maintenance, and lack of climate resilience. The overlap of responsibilities and lack of adequate financing is a critical gap. How can we have sustainable service delivery of WASH in institutions? How can these be financed? This session will show integral approaches based on LAC regional and global experience, and engage participants experience in suggesting next steps at
Speakers will include experts from AECID, UNICEF, WHO, IVL and selected country experiences. Preidentified experiences in LAC include México, Dominican Republic and Guatemala.

More than 2 billion people still lack access to safely managed drinking water, and water quality often doesn't hold steady between point of collection and point of consumption. Household water treatment plays a critical, but often underestimated, role in closing that gap.

This session frames household water treatment not as a stopgap, but as a credible barrier in its own right; one that complements networked infrastructure rather than competing with it, extending safely managed water to more people, faster, especially where full network coverage is still years away.

Through an interactive, hands-on format, participants will examine real-world performance data and health outcomes from household water treatment implementation, including microbial risk reduction, and look at where household water treatment is already gaining recognition in national water safety planning and policy. We'll also dig into what actually determines whether household water treatment succeeds or fails at scale: cost, accessibility, behavioural factors, and people-centred design.

Participants will leave with concrete examples and practical pathways for embedding household water treatment within inclusive water strategies; framing they can bring directly back to their own work.

Progress towards SDG 6 is too slow, and business-as-usual approaches are not delivering transformation at the speed or scale required. Across the WASH sector there is no shortage of ideas, pilots, technologies, partnerships and new approaches. Yet many 
promising and proven innovations remain stuck at pilot stage and fail to become 
embedded within the policies, financing mechanisms and implementation systems that determine sector performance. Innovation is not an end in itself, but one modality for accelerating progress when it helps countries solve persistent bottlenecks and strengthen delivery at scale.

At the same time, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of engaging young people in sector development. Yet participation often remains disconnected from the decisions, implementation processes and accountability mechanisms that shape sector 
outcomes. Meaningful youth engagement is therefore not simply about participation, but 
about creating pathways through which young people can contribute to implementation, 
governance, monitoring, accountability and future sector leadership.

Using Madagascar as a live country anchor, this session will explore how governments can strengthen the enabling environment for innovation and create more accountable 
approaches to meaningful youth engagement. Cross sector actors will respond to the 
Madagascar experience through the lenses of governance, innovation systems, 
partnerships, workforce development and future sector capacity. 

Together with youth representatives and audience participants, the discussion will help distill directions for country-led action, partnership and learning, while helping build momentum towards future compacts and the 2026 UN Water Conference.

Over the past decade, governments and their partners have developed global and national monitoring systems that cover parts of the chain of delivering water and sanitation services, including on: financial inputs (e.g. WASH accounts), the strength of the systems for WASH services delivery (e.g. GLAAS, WASH Systems Index tool), infrastructure and service provider performance (e.g. asset inventories, water point mapping, IBNET, national regulatory data), and outcomes, in terms of service levels (e.g. JMP).

When these data along the results chain are compiled, they can provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the sector, informing sectoral review, decision-making and accountability.

However, in many countries, there is a clear gap in linking these different types of data, and between intended and actual use. This session explores the opportunities and challenges for ensuring that national monitoring data along the results chain are compiled and used to inform sectoral review, decision-making, and accountability processes.

At the 2023 UN Water Conference, the Global Commission on the Economics of Water (GCEW) proposed Just Water Partnerships (JWPs) as country-led, multi-stakeholder platforms capable of bringing together governments, development finance institutions, financial institutions, the private sector, philanthropy and civil society around a shared vision for more integrated, equitable and sustainable water investment. 

Noting that many models of coordination and financing platforms already exist, how can countries transform today's coordination and financing platforms into functioning Just Water Partnerships? 

In 2025, WaterAid and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) facilitated the development of the Just Water Partnership Principles, which were launched at UNFCCC COP 30 after a six-month multi-stakeholder consultation process. 

Rather than prescribing a single institutional model, the Principles provide a framework for elevating people and delivering sustainable, equitable outcomes through strengthening governance and financing arrangements via five dimensions: equity and water justice; national leadership and shared ownership; inclusive and accountable governance; finance anchored in public value and sustainability; and climate and development integration. 

In 2026, research has been undertaken to assess existing coordination and financing platforms and identify which models are more conducive for integrating the Just Water Partnership Principles. 

This session will present the emerging findings from that analysis together with early insights from a rapid diagnostic of how to operationalize JWPs in Brazil. Participants will be invited to challenge the emerging findings, identify gaps and contribute to the refinement of recommendations before they inform the final study, which will be an input into the 14th Roundtable on Financing Water in September 2026 as well as for the 2026 UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi in December 2026.

This session aims to demonstrate the power of reversing the flow: shifting of resources and control of development projects from external actors to local communities pays off. This session will present compelling examples from Bangladesh and Kenya as a starter.
From Bangladesh it will share how communities in the climate-vulnerable char islands of northern Bangladesh are strengthening water resilience through a locally led adaptation model under the Reversing the Flow programme. These riverine chars face intensified monsoon flooding, riverbank erosion, flash floods, rising temperatures, and irregular rainfall—hazards that submerge homes, contaminate drinking water, erode cropland, and disrupt markets and essential services.And how communities in salinity-affected coastal districts of Satkhira and Khulna transitioned from unreliable rainwater harvesting to community-managed RO-based safe drinking water systems through a locally led adaptation approach.
From Kenya it will show community governance in action, not merely participatory planning. In the Tiamamut community, through a joint effort of the elders and the community, they secured funding to rehabilitate, equip, and solarize their borehole.These are two countries out of five funded by the Dutch Government through the Reversing the Flow Programme, supporting communities in vulnerable situations by strengthening their water security.

This session will draw on impact reports and implementation experience from the Adaptation Fund Climate Innovation Accelerator (AFCIA), implemented by UNEP and UNDP, to examine how climate innovation has helped unlock transformative solutions in the water sector. Through selected examples from AFCIA-supported programmes, the session will explore how innovative financing mechanisms, new technologies, and inclusive delivery models have enabled countries to address water scarcity, climate variability, and climate-induced water risks.
The discussion will focus on key lessons learned across AFCIA initiatives, including how innovation can accelerate the scaling of community-centered water solutions; bridge the gap between pilots and systemic change; and strengthen resilience of water services in vulnerable contexts. Particular attention will be given to approaches that integrate digital tools, nature-based solutions, and blended finance to enhance water efficiency, equity, and climate resilience.
By bringing together insights from AFCIA practitioners, policymakers, and partners, the session aims to connect evidence from AFCIA impact reporting with forward-looking perspectives on how innovation ecosystems can better support climate-resilient water systems at scale.

OpenET is a neutral, nonprofit-backed consortium that brings together leading national experts in ET remote sensing, cloud computing, web design, and water resources and policy. OpenET provides freely accessible evapotranspiration (ET) data to all by integrating best-available science with publicly available satellite, meteorological, and land cover information. OpenET was created by an unprecedented public-private collaboration and shaped by input from over 100 stakeholders, including growers, water managers, and water policy decision-makers. 

ET is one of the most important components of a water budget, but it has been difficult to access and cost-prohibitive to produce. Since launching in the U.S. in 2021, OpenET has demonstrated the power of ET data to enable transformative advances in water management, sparking interest from new partners in other countries.

OpenET’s support for regional partners interested in deploying OpenET models and approaches has begun in four countries, which will be showcased by session speakers:

Anderson Ruhoff, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil
Veena Srinivasan, Executive Director, WELL Labs, India
Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Mexico Use Case
Jacob Vejby, Denmark Agency for Climate Data, Denmark
Rachel O'Connor, Director, Water Program, Environmental Defense Fund, United States
Sara Larsen, CEO, OpenET Inc., United States
Lydia Bleifuss, Program Manager, OpenET Inc., United States

The session begins with an interactive icebreaker capturing participants’ experiences with the Build–Neglect–Rebuild (BNR) cycle while fostering early engagement and networking. A high-level speaker will share reflections on addressing the BNR cycle from a global policy perspective and link the session to the pathway from Stockholm to the UN 2026 Water Conference.
Following this framing, four presentations will showcase real-life case studies illustrating both successful and challenging experiences related to the BNR cycle. Cases represent diverse stakeholders including a water utility, water authority, financier, and government representative highlighting lessons learned and practical challenges across institutional levels.
The session transitions into an open fishbowl discussion where presenters and participants jointly reflect on the case studies. This interactive format stimulates dialogue on how people-centered approaches can strengthen water infrastructure sustainability and explore practical strategies for translating policy commitments into action.
The session concludes in plenary, where participants co-develop three tangible reform recommendations and a shared statement for UN Water 2026. Participants are also invited to initiate an international cross-sectoral working group and identify two pilot areas to test and refine proposed recommendations.

The session will explore how climate change is increasing pressure on WASH systems, particularly sanitation, and why future interventions must be designed for resilience from the outset. It will bring together different organisational perspectives to show how resilient, inclusive and context-specific WASH solutions can support communities before, during and after climate-related shocks.

We will start by exploring the rural context with Human Needs and their interventions in Kenya. Then we'll delve into the city context with Quito and their partnership with C40 cities. Finally we'll explore the disaster relief and recovery context with Oxfam and Arup's pro bono support partnership. 

The session will conclude with a panel from our speakers. Please tune in to ask them questions about their experiences. 

As climate change is intensifying and water insecurity is increasing, this session focuses on the progress being made in supporting the private sector to respect freshwater planetary boundaries and contribute to a safe and just future.

The session will provide an inside look at Version 2 (V2) freshwater science-based targets, anticipated for release later in 2026. V2 expands SBTN’s guidance on groundwater and pesticides—key additions intended to help companies address a wider share of their freshwater impacts. In this session, companies currently piloting V2 will share what they’ve learned from the early stages of implementation, along with the next steps planned to address their water-related impacts.

The session will also unpack how companies can prepare freshwater targets to complement their broader sustainability reporting obligations. As regulatory frameworks such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) increasingly require structured reporting of water-related impacts, risks, actions, and targets, SBTN’s freshwater methodology provides the science-based foundation for companies to translate those disclosures into meaningful, measurable change.

The event will feature speakers from: WWF, CEO Water Mandate, Accountability Accelerator, World Resources Institute, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, CDP, EFRAG, H&M Group, and other organizations.

This opening session builds a shared foundation for understanding household water security and why it is essential for climate resilience and equity. It examines how climate variability, scarcity, and extremes disrupt household water and wastewater services—especially reliability, quality, and affordability—with growing impacts in large cities in both the Global South and North.

The session’s core focus is threefold. First, participants will build a shared framing of household water security concepts and the metrics needed to assess it meaningfully. Second, the session will identify the key barriers preventing progress, spanning climate pressures, governance and allocation tradeoffs across domestic–agriculture–industry demand, multi-level coordination and regulation/enforcement, technical and operational constraints, and social and equity barriers that shape who is represented in decisions and who is left behind, including women and girls, informal settlements, rural/remote communities, and people with disabilities.

Third, it will generate priority areas for action—in policy, monitoring, infrastructure, and inclusion—to help translate water security from an abstract goal into practical, implementable steps that inform the next sessions.

This scene-setting session traces how the water sector has evolved in its approach to gender equity, celebrating key achievements, acknowledging the barriers overcome, and examining what the journey has looked like on the ground. Drawing on lived experiences and real-world examples from across the world, it creates space to reflect honestly on complexity, including outcomes that were unexpected or unintended, and what these have taught us. Through interactive dialogue, the session builds a shared foundation for the series, rooted in a commitment to learning from both progress and practice.

The session deliberately foregrounds positive examples and demonstrable change, while making space for honest reflection on where reality diverged from intention and what changes are still needed today. These moments of divergence are treated not as failures, but as signals of where systems need to adapt — and where leadership can make a difference. 

Desired Output: Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how gender equity and transformative approaches have evolved within the water sector, including key achievements, barriers overcome, and lessons learned. The session aims to strengthen awareness of the complexities and unintended consequences that can emerge in programme design and implementation.


 

Dismantling inequalities in access to and use of water requires a deeper understanding of the systemic forces that produce and perpetuate them. Adopting an intersectional perspective, this session explores how governance arrangements, economic systems, fiscal policies, and power relations interact to shape unequal water outcomes across different contexts.

Through three case studies, the session will examine the structural drivers of water inequality and the ways in which they reinforce one another. The cases will demonstrate how decisions and policies related to land use, economic development, governance, finance, and global supply chains shape access to water and sanitisation, influence who benefits from water resources, and determine who bears the associated social and environmental costs. By examining these interconnected systems, the session will highlight how inequalities become embedded and reproduced over time, underscoring the need for cross sectoral approaches that address the root causes of unequal water outcomes rather than their symptoms alone.

Together, these case studies will help define systemic inequalities related to water, shed light on the interconnections between governance, finance, infrastructure, and resource control, and reveal how multiple forms of exclusion and vulnerability are reproduced across scales. These insights will inform subsequent discussions on the principles and actions needed to address water governance, which will be developed in the subsequent two sessions of this seminar.

WASH programming delivers far more than essential water, sanitation, and hygiene services; it also strengthens the social fabric of communities. Reliable water provision supports economic activity and, when managed across shared systems such as watersheds, enhances water security while fostering cooperation among interconnected users. Although sustainability has traditionally focused on maintaining functional services — and more recently enabling sanitation and hygiene behavior change — long-term progress depends equally on strong social systems. Mutual trust, collective stewardship of shared resources, inclusive leadership, and the capacity to address challenges collaboratively reinforce social cohesion and resilience. In a context of evolving development finance and shifting multilateral cooperation, holistic WASH approaches that strengthen both service delivery and social relationships are essential for building resilient, cohesive societies.
This session explores “social cohesion as infrastructure.” Drawing on multi-country implementation experience, stories of significant change, and findings from a holistic flourishing pilot study, we examine how strengthening relationships and local institutions contributes to durable WASH outcomes and broader development progress.
Participants will reflect on whether current sustainability metrics overemphasize service continuity while under-measuring community capacity — and what might shift in program design, monitoring, and financing if social fabric were treated as a core WASH outcome.

The 2026 WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) report presents, for the first time, global estimates for sanitation, environmental cleaning, and waste management in health care facilities, finding that 15% of health care facilities lack basic water services, nearly 30% lack basic waste management services, over 40% lack basic environmental cleaning services, and 60% lack basic sanitation services. 

This session will explore the updated data and showcase how countries and facility teams are improving and sustaining WASH and waste services.
Participants will hear preliminary findings from two global reviews:
• a synthesis of published standards on WASH and waste management in health care settings, updating 2008 guidance;
• an exploration of indicators that extend beyond current JMP basic service levels, with the aim of identifying advanced service indicators for future global monitoring.



 

The session will also examine country actions to meet universal targets articulated in the 2023 UN General Assembly resolution on sustainable WASH, waste, and electricity services in health care facilities, and ongoing efforts toward an updated 2026 resolution.
Country experiences will be highlighted through a roundtable and interactive discussions focused on strengthening monitoring and implementation.

Industrial water treatment and reuse is frequently framed as a triple win: ecological protection, climate action and commercial competitiveness. Yet adoption remains limited across many emerging manufacturing economies, raising questions of whether prevailing narratives reflect real investment conditions or if structural barriers remain obscured.

During this session, we will examine whether a business case holds in practice. 

Drawing on SMEP Programme evidence from pilots based in Bangladesh, Kenya and Pakistan, we move beyond technical feasibility to the operational, financial and systemic realities firms face when accessing investments for water treatment and reuse. Using a trade and development lens, we will explore:

• Economics: Under what conditions do water treatment and reuse investments make financial sense, and for which firms – large exporters and SMEs alike?
• Incentives: Do compliance pressures for medium- and zero-liquid discharge and buyer due diligence drive green market access or simply market shifting toward less demanding buyers?
• Finance: Do blended finance instruments and carbon mechanisms, including Article 6 pathways, genuinely reduce risk and transaction costs, or do they remain inaccessible to most manufacturers in practice?

Comparative evidence across geographies will identify shared and context-specific constraints, and outline reforms needed to move industrial water treatment and reuse from successful pilots to bankable, equitable and scaled initiatives.

In the face of intensifying climate variability, the Global South requires precision to balance the water needs of its people with the requirements of agricultural progress. Traditional water management often suffers from fragmented data, leading to over-abstraction or infrastructure failure. The Water Availability and Demand (WAD) Tool, an open-access platform, bridges this data divide by integrating satellite-based datasets (FAO’s WaPOR) with water accounting outputs to visualize water sufficiency at national, basin, and sub-basin levels.
This session showcases the WAD Tool as a Digital Twin"" of Kenya’s hydrological landscape. Successfully handed over to the National Irrigation Authority (NIA) in January 2026, the tool is now a cornerstone for evidence-based planning, de-risking private investment, and identifying optimal storage locations for supplemental irrigation. Led by a high-level partnership between NIA, IWMI, KEWI, and FAO, the event provides a roadmap for scaling digital water governance across Africa. Participants will learn how harmonized data fosters transparency, strengthens inter-institutional coordination, and secures the future of climate-resilient agriculture.

India’s Water Vision 2047 sets an ambitious long-term pathway towards water security for all sectors under growing climate and demographic pressures, contributing directly to SDG 6 and related global goals on climate resilience and food security. Realizing this vision, beyond strong policy intent, will require sustained collaboration among people, governments, research institutions, donors and on-ground partners - moving beyond business as usual. Anchored in India’s Water Vision 2047, this session examines how national water visions can be operationalized, exploring what works, what does not, and why across technical, governance, regulatory and planning reforms, drawing on Indian and broader international and South–South experience. The session will begin with brief, focused presentations from different partners sharing their experiences followed by a moderated panel discussion that brings together diverse global perspectives to explore what India can learn from other contexts, and which aspects of India’s water reforms offer transferable lessons. The session aims to generate actionable policy and practice insights for governments, research institutions, donors and development partners engaged in shaping and implementing national water strategies, while contributing to the global discourse on equitable, climate-resilient water management.

This session will explore how the Panama Canal, whose operations depend on freshwater, promotes water governance built on trust, sustainability, and collaboration with communities while managing one of the world's most strategic interoceanic trade routes.

Designed for government institutions, civil society organizations, international agencies, and project developers interested in transparent and inclusive development models, the session will demonstrate how integrated water resources management protects a system that supplies water to more than 2.5 million people, sustains global trade connectivity, and contributes to local development.

The discussion will underscore that behind technical decisions, scientific knowledge, engineering solutions, and economic management is a deep commitment to people, ecosystems, and the co-creation of solutions that strengthen water resilience and advance sustainable development.

Changing markets, tightening margins, and climate stress are forcing landowners to rethink what working lands can realistically support. Continuing to farm marginal land is often not viable, but abandoning it is not an answer either. Alternative production and nature-based solutions, with water at the center, offer a third path: restoring land, building domestic supply chains, and paying landowners for the measurable environmental benefits their acres produce.

This session examines how that model works in practice, what makes a water benefit credible to corporate buyers and utilities, and how programs can be structured so value flows back to rural communities rather than bypassing them. Prairie restoration serves as our central case study, grounding the conversation in a real program with real tradeoffs.

We will hear directly from the people navigating these markets: a farmer in the US Midwest weighing what restoration means for their operation, a corporate water stewardship team evaluating nature-based replenishment, and a nonprofit working to ensure rural communities capture the value these programs generate. Together they will explore what these markets can realistically deliver today and what it will take to scale them.

To address growing climate volatility, corporate water stewardship must evolve from strategic targets to measurable impact on the field. This panel brings together a unique collaboration of stakeholders driving effective water stewardship initiatives across Eurasia and the Middle East. 

The Coca-Cola Company will share perspectives on effective stewardship and partnership lessons. 

Global Water Challenge will outline the enablers required to scale successful collective action, among differentiating conditions. 

Doktar will discuss bridging the gap between strategy and agritech implementation for farmers, pointing out what happens on the ground. 

Finally, Waterplan will connect regional water intelligence to actionable decision-making, and address regional challenges in the future. 

Together, the panel will provide a holistic roadmap for future-proofing business supply chains and local ecosystems.

Resilient WASH requires not only better implementation but also better-aligned financing. This session is designed for funders and investors seeking to strengthen the climate resilience of their WASH portfolios. Building on Practical Guidance for Climate-Resilient WASH (Session ID: 12182) from WWW 2025, which translated high-level resilience commitments into practical implementation approaches, this complementary session focuses on funding and financing. The session will introduce Investing in Climate-Resilient WASH, a new resource developed, designed to help funders translate climate ambition into concrete funding decisions. The guide connects resilience outcomes directly to sustainable service delivery, and shows funders how to put these ideas into practice across their own portfolios. These approaches include flexible and multi-year financing; support for innovation and preparatory work; strengthening public finance systems; leveraging blended and climate finance; and investing in capacity, coordination, and knowledge. The session will feature real-world examples and a panel of funders, investors, and WASH finance experts who will share lessons. It will conclude with an interactive Q&A to address questions and hear perspectives of audience. 

This session explores how scientific research and innovation (R&I) can support the effective management of water as an increasingly scarce resource, while strengthening ecosystems and climate resilience. Framed around priorities of Water4All, the session highlights interdisciplinary approaches that integrate hydrology, ecology, public health, climate science and socio-economic analysis.
Presentations will showcase how ecosystem-based and nature-based solutions, circular water strategies and climate-informed decision tools are being developed and applied to improve water availability, quality and resilience. The discussion will emphasise how robust scientific evidence can better inform policy, investment and operational decisions across diverse contexts, including drought-prone and climate-vulnerable regions.
Confirmed speakers include representatives from European and international research organisations, water research funding bodies and applied research projects supported under Water4All themes. Additional contributions will come from practitioners and policy-focused organisations working at the science–policy interface. Together, speakers will reflect on research gaps, scaling challenges and pathways for translating R&I into tangible water-management outcomes.

Supply chains face a triple threat: intensifying climate impacts, groundwater depletion and degraded watersheds, alongside socially vulnerable, labor-intensive workforces.
For companies, these risks translate into yield shocks, quality losses, worker absenteeism and farmer downtime — affecting people, production and ecosystems, and undermining supply continuity and long-term resilience.
Yet many corporate water stewardship efforts still struggle to move from facility-level efficiency to basin outcomes, translate commitments into supplier adoption at scale, and ensure benefits reach people — while WASH often remains overlooked, missing critical co-benefits for business and vulnerable workers and communities.
This session will explore what works, what doesn’t, how to better connect these approaches and how to accelerate progress with an emphasis across agricultural contexts — from smallholders to estates, large farms and basins. Speakers from AB InBev, Diageo and Nature’s Pride will share how they translate materiality insights into practical action, while Bluerisk, The Nature Conservancy and WaterAid will bring tools, frameworks and partnership approaches, including the launch of new guidance on WASH in agricultural supply chains, to support companies in identifying priorities and scaling action.

Groundwater—often invisible and undervalued—is the critical lifeline of global irrigated agriculture and food systems. It sustains more than 40% of the world’s irrigation, underpins food security for billions, and is a buffer against climate extremes.

Yet, this vital resource is being depleted at alarming rates. From the U.S. to the UAE, Spain to Syria, aquifers are being overdrawn faster than they can recharge, threatening ecosystems, communities and the global food system.

Despite its importance, groundwater remains underrepresented in global water and food dialogues and under-prioritized in local and national investment and governance. But there are bright spots where experts—from individual farmers to global organizations—have developed successful community-driven management, model regulatory reforms, innovative agricultural practices, and robust technology and data tools.

To accelerate deployment of this knowledge and innovation and prevent a global “groundwater bankruptcy,” there is an urgent need to bring these practitioners together, foster a global community of practice and identify the roadmap to long-term sustainability of this critical resource.

Through case studies of practical solutions and interactive group dialogues, this event will lay the foundation for creating an impactful global community of practice for sustainable groundwater management.

Speakers:
Ann Hayden, EDF
Mark Smith, IWMI
Veena Srinivasan, WELL Labs
Sofie Sandstrom Jaffee, IUCN

This session will feature a WWF facilitated panel discussion amongst private sector leaders from Food & Beverage and CPG sectors. This panel will explore challenges with and opportunities for securing resources and corporate mandate for investment on water, basin and community resilience programs. Examples may include how to start your water stewardship journey, connect water to business value, and how to work with limited resources. With a new look at how water connects to business value, learn how these leading companies have bridged the gap between business goals and basin investment, and how long-term planning in basins and with communities' safeguards investments for scale.

Across the Global South, achieving universal sanitation requires moving beyond conventional sewered networks. Decentralized sanitation offers an immediate and scalable alternative for rural, peri-urban, and informal settlements, delivering public health protection, decent livelihoods, and driving economic inclusion.

This session showcases how innovative decentralized sanitation technology transfer and local capacity development can provide dignity for the people and transform the sanitation value chain into a sustainable market ecosystem. Drawing on a pilot project implemented in Kenya, the discussion examines:

• Integrating SATO Pans in school environments to improve retention and hygiene, alongside Green Toilet Systems (GTS) with fecal matter treatment facilities to advance circular economy principles.
• Building a localized, skilled workforce trained in system installation, safe septage management, and humanure application, turning human waste management into dignified, profitable livelihoods.
• How public capacity-building institutions and private social enterprises collaborate to set technical standards, maintain quality control, and ensure long-term community ownership.

The discussion highlights how decentralized sanitation models bridge the sanitation gap, proving that the "Improving Public Health and Enhancing Technical Skills of Youth in Kenya through Sanitation Technology Transfer Project" is a scalable framework for driving public health, dignity and economic empowerment across underserved communities in the Global South.

This interactive workshop introduces the "Water Replenishment Clinic", where participants solve real-world basin challenges using scalable replenishment solutions. We emphasize how digital literacy for local farming communities ensures reliable data and sustainable outcomes. Participants will build groups and each group will act as a project management team, building verifiable models by making strategic decisions on specific interventions and indicators, as below while using the provided tools and applications.

• Aim: Avoided abstraction / On-farm reduction / Water productivity / Water quality
• Interventions: Irrigation efficiency / 4R nutrient management / additional measures per scenario
• Indicators: Volumetric benefit (liters/ha/year) / Pollution (NO3-N/ha/year) / additional metrics
• Baseline Approach: Historical data / Neighbour comparison / Seasonal norms / ET model
• Data Sources: Soil moisture / Farmers' logs / Remote sensing / flow measurement
• Expected Risks: Environmental and operational challenges.

By selecting these parameters, teams witness how digital transparency unlocks high-impact water stewardship. This holistic approach ensures every drop saved contributes to local basin health and global sustainability targets, transforming agricultural supply chains from the ground up through data-driven action.

Regional Relevancy Note: While five regions are highlighted for scheduling purposes, this session addresses a global challenge. Doktar’s digital technologies and AI-powered insights deliver scalable impact worldwide, offering universal tools for water stewardship and sustainable livelihoods across all agricultural landscapes and international markets.

This session will showcase the UN Water Conference Academic Hub, a joint initiative co-led by UNU, UNESCO and UNITAR, in collaboration with UN DESA and other members of the Task Force on “Water Action Decade Implementation,” as well as UN-Water Members and Partners. The Academic Hub provides a collaborative platform to mobilize knowledge, expertise, and diverse perspectives in support of the 2026 Conference. It offers a clear and accessible entry point for contributors to engage meaningfully in the Conference process and to help shape its outcomes through evidence-based inputs.

The session will present the contributions to the Hub and demonstrate how it translates research into concise outputs that inform UN Water Conference discussions and follow-up action. Panelists will highlight how the Hub has synthesized research across thematic priorities, elevated diverse voices—including researchers from the Global South and early-career experts—and created structured pathways for academic contributions to shape conference dialogues and long-term water governance processes.  

The UN Water Conference Academic Hub aims to bridge the gap between science and policy by strengthening collaboration between academia and the UN system. Across the globe, as part of UNU-INWEH's efforts to bridge the science-policy gap, UNU Hubs work to advance policy-relevant research, capacity-building, and outreach aligned with UN priorities, offering partner universities a platform to engage directly with the United Nations and contribute to global policy processes.

This session is co-convened by several UNU Hubs who are actively contributing to and co-convening discussions under the Academic Hub. These include the UNU Hub on Engineering to Face Climate Change at the Hamburg University of Technology, the UNU Hub on Remote Sensing and Sustainable Innovations for Resilient Urban Systems (R-SIRUS) at The City College of New York, and the UNU Hub on Water in a Changing Environment (WICE) at Lund University, which will share insights and showcase their ongoing contributions.

The session aims to strengthen the long-term integration of academic expertise within multilateral water governance. By demonstrating how the Academic Hub informs the UN Water Conference through structured knowledge synthesis and inclusive engagement, the panel will emphasize the critical need for science-based policymaking, particularly as the world has entered the era of global water bankruptcy, and for shaping the new water agenda. 

Most WASH interventions reach scale through external funding, but few make the transition to long-term government ownership. This session explores practical pathways from government partnership to country ownership, with a particular focus on co-financing as a bridge to sustainable, government-led service delivery.

Drawing on case studies from multiple countries, we will examine what it takes to move beyond partnership toward operational and financial ownership. Across diverse WASH contexts, a common lesson is emerging: partnership is necessary, but it is not sufficient for lasting impact. Sustainable scale requires intentionally building government capacity, financing, and accountability into program design.

Participants will explore the practical challenges of making that transition: How should pilots be structured to build and demonstrate government capacity? When and how should co-financing commitments be introduced? How can evidence build political and budgetary support? And what signals genuine progress toward government ownership rather than continued dependence on external partners?

The session will share lessons from efforts to secure domestic financing, integrate WASH services into annual government budgets, and embed delivery into routine government systems and operations.

Implementing organizations and funders working across diverse WASH contexts will share what works, what fails, and how programs can be designed from the outset for sustainable, government-led scale.

In 2025, governments and partners advanced a Regional Roadmap for Lead-Free Drinking Water under APEC. Building on that work, and parallel initiatives in Africa, 2026 marks a transition from awareness to implementation. This session will highlight how regional frameworks are being operationalized through adoption of product standards, strengthened conformity assessment, laboratory capacity expansion, supply chain reform, and enforceable lead-free requirements. Government and industry leaders will present implementation case studies from APEC and Sub-Saharan Africa, demonstrating how harmonized standards and regulatory cooperation reduce health risks while facilitating trade and infrastructure investment. The session will also introduce new coordination with the Partnership for a Lead-Free Future and outline how these regional efforts are building toward strengthened commitments at the December 2026 UN Water Conference. Confirmed and invited speakers will include representatives from APEC economies, African regulators, WHO-aligned technical experts, manufacturers, and development finance institutions. Participants will engage in structured dialogue to identify priority implementation steps and opportunities for cross-regional collaboration.

Fragile and conflict-affected settings face significant challenges in sustaining water and sanitation services due to limited public financing, weak institutions, climate shocks, and population displacement. Services often begin as emergency interventions—such as water trucking and NGO-managed systems—but frequently lack clear pathways toward long-term sustainability. As humanitarian funding declines, governments and partners must transition to more resilient, locally owned service delivery models.
This session will explore how local authorities and partners are shifting from emergency provision to sustainable, utility-led water services. Approaches include strengthening institutional capacity, engaging private sector operators, mobilizing domestic and blended financing, and designing tariff structures that balance affordability with operational sustainability. The discussion will also examine the Climate-Fragility Nexus and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus, highlighting how reliable water services can promote stability, social cohesion, and inclusive development.
Speakers will share practical experiences from Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and other fragile contexts, demonstrating how political commitment, innovative financing, and institutional reforms can support resilient water systems and long-term progress. The session will combine brief interventions, moderated dialogue, and interactive audience engagement to generate actionable insights.
Participants will include government representatives, development partners such as finance institution, development partners, donors, UN agencies including UNICEF, UN-Habitat-GWOPA and UNHCR, and utilities.

A 37% increase in shipping activities in the Arctic between 2013-2023 was documented, which is significant, though given a low baseline, shipping in the region in the present remains at small scale and associated mostly with natural resource extraction, fishing and destination tourism. Arctic shipping corridors from the Pacific Ocean to Europe and North America have emerged on the agenda as a possibility that could significantly decrease distances. Although, multiple barriers remain including harsh operating conditions, safety concerns, requirements for environmental safeguarding, limited infrastructure, in addition to heightened geopolitical tensions. Future Arctic shipping corridors require significant investments in green technologies and clean fuel infrastructure. This requires multilateral governance, commitment and innovations to balance economic development, environmental protection, and the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

Water flows dynamically through systems, yet freshwater availability is limited and demands careful stewardship to sustain people, ecosystems, and future generations. Global water agendas tend to focus on visible blue water in rivers, lakes and groundwater while overlooking green water (precipitation stored in soils and vegetation). This fragmented approach fails to recognize that land use planning and soil management are water management, even though they shape the hydrological cycle, and are shaped by it.

Bringing together experts from distinct, but hydrologically interlinked domains – starting from the biophysical realm of green water’s stocks and flows to its transboundary governance, supportive and regulative private & public instruments, and finally the private, public and private-public partnerships’ initiatives on the ground – this session aims to explore the current collective knowledge base and identify crucial knowledge gaps for any of these domains.

Creating this knowledge agenda will enable us not only to set up a research agenda for each of these domains, but also to align all actors within this field to give green water the place it deserves in governance, investment and locally rooted practices and initiatives. Even more so, it aims to link proven local solutions to global water resilience despite policy silos, evidence gaps, and fragmented knowledge.

This session will highlight the recent flagship report Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH), which states that the world has entered the era of “water bankruptcy”, a persistent post-crisis condition in which long-term water use has exceeded renewable inflows and safe depletion limits, degrading water systems beyond realistic recovery.

It will also discuss why current water governance and policy agendas are no longer fit for purpose and will propose a fundamental shift toward “bankruptcy management”—rebalancing demand with degraded carrying capacity; embedding transparent water accounting; protecting remaining natural capital; and prioritizing equity, just transition, and resilience for vulnerable populations.

The session aims to place global water bankruptcy at the center of the international water agenda, helping policymakers, practitioners, and civil society recognize that business-as-usual approaches are inadequate. It seeks to catalyze a new fresh water agenda must be developed that takes Global Water Bankruptcy as a starting point and uses the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the conclusion of the Water Action Decade (2028), and the 2030 SDG 6 timeline as milestones for resetting how the world understands and governs water. 

Speakers for this panel include UNU-INWEH Director, a Professor Kaveh Madani, UNU-INWEH Director and 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate who will present the key findings of the Global Water Bankruptcy report. 

This session will focus on Asia, examining progress on Water for People through the Water–Energy–Food–Ecosystem (WEFE) Nexus, emphasizing the shift from commitments to practical implementation. Drawing on regional showcases, it will highlight policy lessons and operational practices from integrated water cycle management—from upper catchments to downstream basins—to advance equitable, climate-resilient water security.
River basins underpin food production, climate adaptation, water and energy security, ecosystem services, and economic activities. However, climate change, rising demand, and ecosystem degradation are intensifying hydrological variability, increasing flood and drought risks, and placing growing pressure on livelihoods, food systems, and regional stability. Groundwater stress—driven by irrigation dependence, industrial expansion, and digital-sector growth—heightens competition for water resources and challenges long-term resilience across sectors and communities.
Discussions will identify priority policy actions to strengthen basin-scale climate coordination, align environmental flows with sectoral demands, including climate-responsive food production, and implement allocation and planning models capable of managing compound risks. Emphasis will be placed on inclusive governance, equitable benefit-sharing, and protection of vulnerable communities.
The session will advance operational guidelines developed for actionable pathways for climate-responsive water management—integrating nature-based solutions, technical and digital innovation, and basin governance—to operationalize low-carbon, equitable, and resilient WEFE systems across Asia beyond 2030.

As water-related risks intensify, financial resources are increasingly mobilized for water and climate action. Strengthening the connection between financial design, basin planning, and hydrological variability is essential to sustain implementation and deliver outcomes for people. Advancing climate finance to match hydrological reality requires aligning capital with basin diagnostics, governance structures, and implementation capacity.
This session explores how basin-aligned financial approaches can better support farmer-led action and collective water initiatives that deliver measurable outcomes for people and ecosystems.
The discussion examines three dimensions. First, the use of basin diagnostics to guide where and how financial resources are deployed. Second, the design of performance-based, risk-sharing, and basin-aligned incentive mechanisms that enable farmers, through their organizations, to participate in water action without compromising production stability or planning capacity. Third, the linkage of financial flows to outcome-oriented indicators that allow progress to be tracked and adjusted over time at basin scale.
A practical case illustrates how financial mechanisms embedded in collective governance translate commitments into sustained implementation, learning, and shared water outcomes.

Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR) has enormous potential to enhance water security, climate resilience, and sustainable livelihoods – but only when water is deliberately integrated into restoration planning, management and governance. Forests regulate water flows, improve water quality and groundwater recharge, reduce flood and drought risks, and store carbon. At the same time, they are significant water users. In addition to conservation and sustainable management efforts, careful, science-based planning is essential for long-term successful FLR, especially in water-scarce and climate-vulnerable regions.

This hybrid seminar brings together leading international organizations to examine how water-smart approaches can strengthen management outcomes across landscapes and river basins. The session will present the latest science, innovative tools and practical experiences that integrate hydrology, ecosystem services, and climate action into restoration and management strategies. Participants will gain insights into how water considerations can be embedded from local landscapes to river basins, as well as at the continental scale through atmospheric moisture transport by considering evaporationsheds and precipitationsheds for green water.

Through concise expert inputs and interactive dialogue, the seminar will connect practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and development partners to explore how restoration can simultaneously safeguard water resources, enhance resilience, and support local development.

(1) Outline current global trends affecting WASH in humanitarian settings across various geographical scales, including the gap between growing humanitarian needs and decreasing resources.

(2) Learn new ways of working as key actors in the sector adapt to achieve more with less, while also managing increasing risks for the most vulnerable populations.

(3) Learn from case studies that highlight the evolving challenges and realities of WASH service delivery in complex humanitarian contexts.

(4) Lay the foundation for subsequent discussions under this series to be explored in sessions 2 and 3 on new tools and collaborative frameworks for more effective service delivery and long-term resilience.