Our partners at COP26 are all contributing to a dramatic schedule that will pitch Glasgow to the forefront of the global response to climate change. The Resilience Hub events platform is live on this site and you are invited to register to attend either virtually or in person. Browse the calendar and register your interest here.
Our partners for the Water programme theme are:
Anglian Water, that supplies water and sewerage to 6 million UK customers.
Mott MacDonald, the international civil engineering consultancy.
COP26 Water and Climate Pavilion partners, the focal point for water issues and partners at COP26.
What has water to do with resilience?
Water is at the heart of the climate crisis, as crucial to adaptation as carbon is to mitigation. Our increasingly variable climate is profoundly altering the water cycle, jeopardising shared water resources and increasing flood and drought risk.
We need to act right now to identify and accelerate collaborative, low carbon solutions to deliver water resilience – such as wetland restoration, protection of water sources and integrated management of water, energy and food supplies – if we are to deliver successful adaptation and a truly resilient future.
What does this mean in terms of projects and initiatives on the ground?
Thinking about water and resilience and how they interconnect, the sorts of projects and initiatives that show what good can look like might mean activities that can promote and enable resilience building at different scales and infrastructure lifecycle stages. For example,
- Water-related nature-based solutions, including the safeguarding of freshwater ecosystems and water resources, as well as preventing and reversing the deterioration of critical systems such as wetlands, peatlands, and mangroves, and enabling large-scale restoration and promoting the green and blue infrastructure solutions
- Urban water management, including wastewater treatment and re-use
- The food-water-energy nexus, including managing trade-offs between water users and the use of smart and efficient irrigation technology along with regenerative agriculture and soil management practices, as well as facilitating the role of water in enabling clean energy transition
- Creating an enabling environment that encourages system-scale planning
- Ensuring sustainable, universal, and equitable access to water, sanitation, and hygiene through strengthening local management capabilities, and promoting just and inclusive water governance
- Financing of resilient water infrastructure over climate-relevant timescales
- Engaging in cross-sectoral innovation and collaboration with dynamic civil society groups
- Water-related hazards: preventing, planning for, and reacting to them, as well as post-disaster rehabilitation
- Indigenous / traditional water management practices for adapting to changing water availability
- Resilient water utilities
- Private sector water resilience initiatives (must be related to climate adaptation and resilience, not just corporate water risks)
- Trans-boundary water resilience to climate change
- Standards, methodologies and approaches to understanding, reporting and managing climate related water risks and delivering water resilience
What are the outcomes we hope to achieve as a community of practice?
If we get our collaboration right, now and in the future, we would like to see:
- Tangible and ambitious water-climate solutions included in country partners’ national development plans (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs).
- Showcasing of ambitious water resilience commitments and leaders, as well as specific, currently available solutions for water resilience – particularly from the global south.
- Securing commitment to the Race to Resilience from water actors.
The full programme will be launched shortly, along with the event platform and registration. Sign up using the form on this site and we’ll update you as it goes live.