We all know that water is vital to human existence, but what does it mean to truly value water?
This year’s World Water Week (2022 WWW), held in Stockholm, Sweden, from August 23 to September 1, focused on further elevating the crucial role of water, especially its availability, accessibility, and quality as affected by the impacts of climate change.
In one session, authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment summarized that the climate crisis is a water crisis. And yet water remains overlooked in climate negotiations. The Glasgow Climate Pact, the outcome of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) which was attended by diplomats from almost 200 countries, included no mention of water.
As a first-time attendee at World Water Week, I’d like to share what I heard and call attention to this threatened natural resource. Throughout the week, the bottom-line message and clear take-away was: We cannot leave water out of climate conversations.
“Unseen” Water and Climate Change
While “seen” water is usually thought of as the tangible elements of surface water—lakes, streams, seas and even glaciers—2022 WWW brought attention to those elements that tend to be undervalued because they are “unseen,” such as groundwater and water in industry.