Water Futures Mobilizing Multi Stakeholder Action for Resilience 2025

Water governance should be no longer siloed but fully embedded into climate action plans and other development strategies across industries and sectors, including urban development plans.Support institutions in integrating water governance horizontally by positioning water resilience as a core principle of national security and local resilience issues. This means addressing fragmentation and coordination failures and integrating water resources management within broader strategies and sector development agendas. Water governance should be no longer siloed but fully embedded into climate action plans and other development strategies across industries and sectors, including urban development plans. Support institutions in integrating water governance vertically by co-designing consultative platforms and tools at the appropriate level and scale within basin systems and effectively coordinating across levels of government and administrative boundaries. Capacity building for local professionals, institutions and partnerships is a key challenge that multi-stakeholder collaboration can help address. The participation of social representatives, including youth, Indigenous groups and campaigners, plays a critical role in building awareness of essential water issues and building more comprehensive perspectives. Ensure that water data and risk management tools and mechanisms play a key role in the water governance system to enhance transparency, accountability and the integration of local knowledge. Effective and adaptive water governance should be inclusive, data-driven and information-based, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions about water management, risk management and multi-stakeholder dialogue. Avoiding the compartmentalization of data and decision-making is essential for developing comprehensive approaches. This requires integrating not only data on surface water but also other components of the hydrological cycle, including groundwater, green water and key management variables such as land tenure, water rights and climate projections. Build capacity, knowledge and awareness across levels of government and local communities. This can help ensure that flexibility and agility are built in to water management programmes. Strategies and frameworks should be created to foster learning, education and awareness-raising among water- focused institutions and other stakeholders. Private sector lead Integrate water governance within the broader corporate strategy. Companies are increasingly appointing dedicated roles to water. Water considerations and strategies should not be siloed but made core to a company’s overall strategy, including supply chain management and technology investments. Collect and disclose company water-related data to facilitate water governance. Data collection at the company level can help companies better engage with water governance, as it creates transparency about companies’ water needs and uses. Establish a private sector association or mechanism that brings together key private sector actors, particularly large water consumers. This would facilitate more effective participation in basin-level governance and partnerships. By ensuring legitimacy and a deep understanding of private sector needs, such a collaboration could proactively participate in multi-stakeholder processes. 27 Water Futures: Mobilizing Multi-Stakeholder Action for Resilience