World Water Week 2023 is focused on innovation at a time of unprecedented challenges. The theme Seeds of Change: Innovative Solutions for a Water-Wise World invites us to rethink how we manage water. Which ideas, innovations, and governance systems will we need in a more unstable and water scarce world?
World Water Week 2023 will focus on innovation at a time of unprecedented changes. Human activities have triggered a global water crisis where we have for the first time crossed the safe planetary boundary for water. Yet this is only one of multiple interlinked crises; in addition, we must simultaneously tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty. Water is at the core of all these threats, which also means that it is one of the most powerful tools to find solutions.
It seeks to attract people from all over the world and all sectors of society since no one is unaffected by the current meta crisis of escalating risks. Forward-looking governments and companies are assessing how they should adjust their societies, economies, and business models to life on a hotter and more water-scarce planet.
This should usher in an era of innovation and rethinking related to how we use, value, and manage water. Most of our current systems are based on the assumption that there will always be a reliable supply of water but that will no longer be the case. Instead, we must prepare for a more unpredictable world with more frequent and severe droughts, floods, and other weather extremes. Societies can limit many of these impacts by working with nature to strengthen the water cycle and increase the resilience of people and ecosystems. More information