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19 May 2023
UN Water’s 2023 Data Drive:
On the 2nd of May, UN Water launched the third round of global data compilation for sustainable development goal 6 (SDG 6) on water to integrate and mainstream the evidence base for global decision making on water and sanitation, the 2023 Data Drive. This third data drive is taking place against the background of a marked improvement over time in the breadth and depth of national reporting on SDG6 since the first data drive in 2016/2017 and the second in 2019/2020: the size and quality of the global data set guiding national and international decision making on water has improved steadily since the launch of the 2030 Agenda in 2015...
18 May 2023
66% likelihood of temperatures reaching 1.5⁰C above normal in the next five years
On the 16th of May, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced that there is a 66% likelihood that the average global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is also a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record...
18 May 2023
Interview: Federico Properzi, UN Water
Tobias Schmitz: At the last UN Water Conference in Mar del Plata in 1977, member states prepared national plans in advance and ultimately met for a period of two weeks. In the 2023 UN Water Conference, the agenda was fairly open and the meeting lasted three days. This puts quite a lot of pressure on achieving the outcomes in a short space of time...
9 May 2023
Death toll from floods in DRC and Rwanda mounts
Floods in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have killed at least 400 people according to the governor of the South Kivu region where the floods occurred. Heavy rain commenced in the areas on the 4th of May and continued on the 5th of May, swelling the Cibira/Cabondo and Nyamakubi rivers and triggering landslides which swept through the villages of villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi...
8 May 2023
WFP and UNEP sign agreement to boost food and water security
On the 5th of May, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) signed an agreement designed to strengthen cooperation around various aspects touching on water and food security. The agreement was the culmination of some two years of preparatory work towards collaboration between the two UN bodies, as well as the product of a learning process between two very different organisational cultures...
8 May 2023
Interview: Lesha Witmer
Tobias Schmitz: Looking back at the UN 2023 Water Conference, we had a 3-day window to catch up on the last 46 years since the last official UN water conference in Mar del Plata. So, it was a huge opportunity but also a big challenge to get the most out of it. From your perspective, how did you feel it was organised? Did we squeeze out of it what we could have? Lesha Witmer: Actually, it is quite intriguing...
3 May 2023
Lake Kenyatta: Lamu County and a Water Users Association work to protect a vital resource.
For 40 years, David Muiga, aged 72, has lived in Mpeketoni, Lamu County, Kenya, having moved there from the Rift Valley decades ago and joining thousands of immigrants. Mpeketoni started as a government settlement scheme in the 1970s for landless people drawn from other parts of Kenya. With water readily available from Lake Kenyatta, the area grew rapidly as agricultural production increased to supply local towns such as Lamu, but also to Malindi, Mombasa and even Nairobi...
27 Apr 2023
Study maps areas of the world at risk of heatwaves
A study published in Nature Communications on the 25th of April has identified which regions in the world are vulnerable to extreme heatwaves. Understanding vulnerability to heatwaves can be useful in the development of disaster risk reduction strategies and the planning of responses to such extreme weather events...
26 Apr 2023
Unseasonal heatwave and drought in Spain
The Spanish Meteorological Agency AEMET forecast a heatwave towards the end of April, with temperatures reaching 36-38⁰C. In some areas, the temperature was 10-15⁰C above average for this period of the year. On the 8th of May, AEMET reported that April 2023 was the hottest April experienced by the country since records began in 1961...
18 Apr 2023
The Five Dimensions of Water
Independently of the professional discipline from which we analyse water management - whether we are looking at water from the perspective of international water law, financial investments, engineering, or social equity – the current approach focuses too narrowly on ‘water’ as the liquid H₂O...
18 Apr 2023
Water for Nature, Nature for Water:
On the 23rd of March, a side event was held at the UN 2023 Water Conference to present international and national legal tools and local customary norms to mainstream the protection of rivers and other water-related ecosystems in decision-making and announce commitments for the Water Action Agenda. Initiated by the International Association of Water Law, the event was co-created by 45 participant organisations, and took the form of an intergenerational debate on improving the governance of freshwater biodiversity for the benefit of people and nature and for transformative change towards the achievement of the 2030 Agenda...
14 Apr 2023
U.S. Interior Department announces measures to protect the Colorado River Basin
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in the Department of Interior has drafted a set of three different options to preserve the water in the Colorado River Basin, which has been suffering from the impacts of drought since 2020. The water levels in the river’s main reservoirs in the river – Lake Powell and Lake Mead - have recently fallen to critically low levels...