One Water Summit: laying the groundwork for action ahead of the UN Water Conference in 2026
published on 12 December 2024
On December 3, France, Kazakhstan and the World Bank Group co-organized the One Water Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on the margins of the COP16 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. Having taken part in this summit, Lionel Goujon, Head of AFD’s Water and Sanitation Division, highlights its importance for a sector without a global governance model.
Why does water management attract less attention than other major environmental issues?
Lionel Goujon: Governments are very aware of this issue, and their demands are high: water accounted for 14% of AFD’s operations last year. However, this sector still lacks coordinated governance on an international scale. Water is essentially a local resource, managed differently depending on each watershed, which may explain why there is less call for a global water policy. In contrast to issues like climate change, biodiversity and desertification, there is no UN water convention, no documents committing governments to improvement targets, no monitoring, and only a few UN conferences on water, one in 1977 and another in 2023.
The UN has at least 26 agencies working on water-related programs. Coordinating these various organizations is complex, which partly explains the lack of clarity with regard to water governance up to now. Two months ago, the Secretary-General of the United Nations appointed a Special Envoy on Water to take the lead on these issues, and the UN has scheduled water conferences for 2026 and 2028.
Watch the video: Accessing Clean Water around Lake Victoria
What are the aims of the One Water Summit and what has it achieved?
The One Water Summit’s main objective was to advance the water agenda among high-level politicians, as demonstrated by the Presidents of France and Kazakhstan, as well as the World Bank Group, and thus build momentum going into the next UN Water Conference in 2026. The most significant progress on water management has been made in countries whose leaders have tackled the issue head-on, giving these efforts real impetus.
In his speech, the President of France also highlighted the key role of public development banks in financing the sector. This is exactly what we’ve been working on with our counterparts in other countries via the Water Finance Coalition—founded as part of the Finance in Common (FiCS) initiative—as well as with national public development banks. These domestic institutions currently provide less financing in the water sector (as a percentage of their activity) than international banks.
As a result of the summit on December 3, the One Water Vision Coalition was also launched. Its aim is for governments to work together with the research community to better understand water resource management. Paradoxically, in Africa for example, the mechanisms for water resource monitoring are less effective than they were 50 years ago. The challenge is to maintain these efforts, while introducing new technology such as satellite imagery.
See also: [Focus] Water Sanitation
What action is AFD taking in the water and sanitation sector?
AFD Group is supporting numerous projects in the water sector across the world. In Egypt, AFD is financing a project to increase the capacity of the Gabal El-Asfar wastewater treatment plant, the largest such facility in Africa, from which some of the treated wastewater is discharged back into the water system in East Cairo for reuse. For the past 20 years, we’ve also been working with the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority in Cambodia, which is now a model of efficient public service management. In Brazil, Proparco provides support to water distribution and wastewater treatment operators under public service concessions in major cities like Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
