24 October 2022

Ladies and Gentlemen,

You all are well aware of the different challenges we are facing to discuss the water pollution, failing flood protection system.

We can easily state that we are in a watershed moment. Based on the scientific evidence it is obvious that what we are facing is not a couple of standalone problems, but a real systemic challenge.

In this critical stage, I’m seeing your suggestions on how to best prepare for the UN Water Conference in March 2023.

Today’s roundtable discussions are structured around the building blocks of the Global Acceleration Framework, namely governance, capacity development, data and information, innovation and financing.

Let us not forget the most important, how to pull all the above together.

I look forward to hearing your views on our journey to sustainability, on how to become more resilient to water crises and how to scale up preparedness.

Here we have an opportunity to explore some real game changers through the lenses of solidarity, sustainability and science – the motto of the 77th session of the General Assembly.

Let me highlight a few special aspects that may merit your thorough consideration:

First, making “the invisible” groundwater more visible and understandable.

Second, enhancing the linkages between freshwater and oceans.

Third, integrating the water and climate agendas from monitoring through modelling to service provision and decision support.

Your ideas today are meant to inform and inspire the Member States’ discussions tomorrow at the Preparatory Meeting, in the run-up to the March 2023 Conference.

They will also feed into the SDG summit in September 2023, as well as the Summit of the Future in 2024.

Your contributions today may set the stage for the years and decades to come.

When and if not now?

We have key actors in the room or online.

We have most of the necessary ideas available.

And we see all the compelling factors to push the transformation ahead.

It should be the years and decades when we must transform from reactive water management to proactive, science-based solutions to the water crisis.

In this great endeavor, science must be our guide.

Leonardo da Vinci, the real Renaissance man, was famously named as the “Master of Water”.

Curious to understand the secrets of water, he was the first to describe the hydrological cycle as an endless loop of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. 

Five hundred years later, his discovery of the hydrological cycle is still essential to understanding the impacts of climate change in our lives.

Our glasses are half-full of water today. Let us fill them up.

Because, as Leonardo da Vinci said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”

Once again apologies for the technical problems. And I promise to try to get healthier as soon as I can, and rejoin you maybe tomorrow, maybe in the forthcoming days.

Thank you very much indeed for your kind attention.