Water Futures Mobilizing Multi Stakeholder Action for Resilience 2025

Where to start Multi-stakeholder collaboration Accelerate and scale-up partnerships that have water conservation at the basin level as their scope of action, breaking down siloes and convening multiple stakeholders around shared goals. In many cases, basin-level management could require an integrated transboundary approach, ensuring international cooperation and partnerships. Initially these partnerships will naturally attract leaders and early adopters in specific basins, yet achieving scale should remain a short- or medium-term objective. Build cross-sectoral trust and collaboration across stakeholders, through transparency, data and effective communication. Promoting dialogue and information exchange between relevant stakeholders at the basin level can reinforce a sense of trust, ensure transparency and improve collaboration. This should include transparent data-sharing platforms among government, private sector and civil society actors, as well as effective communication strategies to guide citizens on day- to-day stewardship. Engage farmers and rural communities to empower them with best practices for water management in agriculture. This should include not only information-sharing and training but also promoting and supporting the adoption of technologies that enable highly efficient water use in agriculture (e.g. alternate wetting and drying (AWD) in rice cultivation or micro-irrigation), improving soil health and implementing approaches to maximize biodiversity in landscapes and rural settings. Develop shared metrics for defining and measuring success and collective benchmarking at the basin level, to enable effective data governance and monitoring for evidence-based water management. Establish measurable goals for water management (e.g. water quality, availability, equity), to align and coordinate stakeholders, ensuring accountability and enabling the early identification and communication of challenges. This can be facilitated through participatory approaches, to tackle the current fragmentation and lack of water data. Strengthen basin-level anchor institutions and build capacities to empower stakeholders and coordinate water management efforts. Provide stakeholders with the technical, financial and management capabilities required for effective water management at the basin level to respond to increasing water challenges. This can improve transparency, inclusivity, accountability and conflict resolution over water use, recognizing the value of all water resources. Private sector lead Assess the company’s water footprint at the basin level, by collecting data following existing methodologies and standards.Examples include: –Water Footprint Assessment Tool, developed by Water Footprint Implementation and the Water Footprint Network (WFN).75 –WFN’s Assessment Manual provides a comprehensive set of definitions and methods for water footprint accounting, covering individual processes, products, consumers, nations and businesses.76 –ISO 14046: Water Footprint Standard, specifying principles, requirements and guidelines for conducting and reporting a water footprint assessment of products, processes and organizations.77 Promote the implementation and widespread adoption of standards across value chains as well as basin- and sub-basin-level partnerships. Such standards can serve as a foundational step towards scaling-up water stewardship. Examples include mechanisms such as ISO for water management at the farm level. Raise ambition of corporate stewardship plans to the basin level. Water management efforts in the private sector can be strengthened and advanced by empowering corporates to minimize risks and negative environmental impacts, and to drive innovation in water-related data, tools and strategies at the basin level. Coordinated and integrated basin action can make companies more resilient and efficient, improve planning and enable cost-sharing and economic integrity. Coordinated and integrated basin action can make companies more resilient and efficient. Water Futures: Mobilizing Multi-Stakeholder Action for Resilience 24