8 December \u2013 The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Groundwater Summit concluded today with a call for Governments and other stakeholders to scale up efforts to better manage groundwater – an invisible life-sustaining resource.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we face an uncertain future, there is an urgent need to protect groundwater from pollution and use it sustainably, balancing the needs of people and the planet,\u201d said Gilbert F. Houngbo, Chair of Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-Water, in his video message to the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-Water Summit on Groundwater<\/a> held at the Headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵESCO) in Paris.\u00a0 \u201cThis Summit is the culmination of our shared focus on groundwater during the whole of 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n At the closing session, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ-Water, a mechanism to coordinate water-related work of the entire Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ system, issued a joint statement that included a call to action towards the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Water Conference <\/a>to take place on 22\u201324 March 2023 in New York.<\/p>\n In the statement, Governments, the donor community, the private sector and civil society are called upon to declare voluntary commitments and announce accelerated action towards financing sustainable groundwater management, development and use; collection and sharing of data and information; strengthening human and institutional capacity; leveraging and scaling up innovations for groundwater management; and financing for groundwater governance.<\/p>\n “Members States are specifically called upon to register voluntary commitments on groundwater capacity development, data, information, innovation, governance, and finance as part of the Water Action Agenda<\/a> of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ 2023 Water Conference,” the statement reads.<\/p>\n Speaking at the opening session of the Groundwater Summit yesterday, Henk Ovink, <\/strong>Special Envoy for International Water Affair, Kingdom of the Netherlands, described the deplorable state of groundwater as \u201ca ticking time bomb that few in the world recognize,\u201d explaining that the world has long undervalued groundwater, and as a result, the resource is mismanaged and polluted.<\/p>\n He also stressed the importance of data and scientific knowledge about groundwater, while drawing attention to the State of Global Water Resources report<\/a> recently published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot manage what we do not measure,\u201d he said, highlighting the report that shows the arid hotspots in the world.\u00a0 Future reports will include more detailed observations on groundwater and soil moisture that would be freely accessible and disaggregated based on gender, age and location, he added.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all know that investing in water trickles down across all SDGs<\/a> [Sustainable Development Goals],\u201d Mr. Ovink stressed, urging all stakeholders to seize the opportunity of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ 2023 Water Conference,<\/a> which his country and Tajikistan are co-hosting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 8 December \u2013 The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Groundwater Summit concluded today with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":363,"featured_media":107543,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7511,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-water-and-sanitation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/363"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/sustainabledevelopment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}