Yu Zhongbo attended the 2023 United Nations Water Conference

Yu Zhongbo was invited to join the high-level delegation of the Ministry of Water Resources of China and attended the 2023 United Nations Water Conference

From March 22 to 24, the United Nations (UN) 2023 Water Conference was held at the UN Headquarters in New York, United States. This meeting was co-hosted by the Governments of the Netherlands and Tajikistan. Leaders, ministers, senior representatives of the UN system, and over 1200 representatives from civil society, youth, women, and the private sector participated in the meeting. Professor Yu Zhongbo, President of the UNESCO Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering Sciences of Hohai University attended the meeting.

The 2023 UN Water Conference is the most standardized and influential water related thematic conference at the UN level in the past 50 years, since the Mar del Plata Water Conference was held in 1977. It aims to address the challenges of water to public health, ecological environment, food and energy security, and economic development, raise awareness of the global water crisis, and take concerted actions to achieve the water-related goal of sustainable development.

The 2023 UN Water Conference includes the opening and closing ceremonies, six plenary meetings and five interactive dialogues, as well as side events and other special activities. The themes of the five interactive dialogues were "Water For Health: Access to WASH, including the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation", "Water for Sustainable Development: Valuing Water, Water-Energy-Food Nexus and Sustainable Economic and Urban Development", "Water for Climate, Resilience, and Environment: Source to Sea, Biodiversity, Climate, Resilience, and Disaster Risk Reduction", "Water for Cooperation: Transboundary and International Water Cooperation, Cross Sectoral Cooperation, including Scientific Cooperation, and the Water Across 2030 Agenda" and "Water Action Decade: Accelerating the implementation of the objectives of the Decade, including through the UN Secretary-General’s Action Plan". The Chinese high-level delegation attended the "Water for Sustainable Development" interactive dialogue co-chaired by China and the European Union on March 22.

The Joint International Research Laboratory of Global Change and Water Cycle (JLGCWC) co-organized the side event " Taking next steps for a water and climate resilient world through capacity development of people and organizations " on March 23. This side event presented capacity development as a game changer which takes an adaptive approach to the generation and use of knowledge, thereby enabling partners to address current and future challenges in a changing. Professor Yu Zhongbo pointed out that for development in water to be sustainable, investing in capacity development is an absolute must, a central part of game changers for our efforts, particularly on the education of our next generation of young water scientists and capacity of water training centers and networks. China is a chair nation in water education, one of five themes in the nineth phase of IHP strategic plan, and has been leading effort on student scholarship, young scientist leadership training, and capacity building. China will continue to commit supports and collaborate with all colleagues to accelerate the implementation of actions in water science, water data, water education, water management, and water governance. During the side event, the 2023 Global Water Development Report was released, and a science based global water assessment plan was discussed.

The Water Action Agenda was also adopted at the 2023 UN Water Conference, calling on all countries, industries, and actors to work together to address global water challenges. The Water Conference has anchored the direction and clarified the path for accelerating the achievement of the water-related SDGs and global water security.