Ten things you need to know about the UN Water Conference

1. It is definitely going ahead in Abu Dhabi from 8-10 December. The US and Australia suggest people should “reconsider travel” to the UAE. Germany is advising against non-essential travel. France, Spain, and Britain suggest additional caution. The UAE, of course, says it is safe to travel. No one is listening to the diplomats, however. The person who has effectively decided that the UN Water Conference will go ahead as planned is Formula 1 chief Stefano Domenicali. He had been considering moving the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – scheduled for 6th December – to Imola in Italy on security fears, but on Saturday he confirmed that conditions in the emirate were sufficiently safe to proceed. If Abu Dhabi is safe for F1, it is safe for H2O.
   

2. There is a strong financial travel advisory against going to Abu Dhabi early. The Grand Prix pushes up hotel prices in Abu Dhabi sevenfold. Normally, a Sunday night at the Andaz hotel in the ADNEC convention centre costs around $210. On the night of the Grand Prix on 6th December, you can expect to pay $1,450. It falls to $900 for the night of 7th December, which will get you in town for the opening of the UN event on the morning of the 8th. There are still cheaper hotels currently priced around $300-400 for the night of the 7th (the Aloft, the Premier Inn, the Pearl and Arjaan Rotanas, and the Centro) right next to ADNEC. It seems that the real VIPs will be staying at the Emirates Palace Hotel: you can find a garret in the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental for the Sunday night for a mere $10,000, but after that it is booked solid until the end of the conference.
   

3. It is difficult to get a Blue Zone pass at this stage. The ADNEC venue will be divided into two: part of it will be given over to the UN Water Conference, with access controlled by UN Security (this is the Blue Zone – named after the UN’s favourite colour). The other half, known as Oasis, will be open to all. If your organisation did not apply for UN accreditation back in March, it is going to be difficult to get into the Blue Zone. 6,038 organisations – largely NGOs – met the deadline. So did major water companies including Veolia, Suez, Saur, Ecolab, Grundfos, AVK, De Nora, and Kemira, as well as tiddlers like Fido, Oxyle, Boreal Light, and Aquacycl. Pentair, Kurita, Schneider, Siemens, Acwa, Acciona, and Aqualia did not apply. If you are not on the list, then the best strategy is either to join an official country delegation, to be invited as a speaker to join one of the official side events, or to pretend you think the whole thing is an expensive waste of time.
   

4. The UN proceedings are not user-friendly. They consist of three activities: the plenary, the interactive dialogues, and the official side meetings. The plenary is undoubtedly the most tedious: every UN member state gets four minutes at the podium to say something nice about water, one after the other. It is a string of endless platitudes, with the occasional barb thrown at geopolitical enemies. It works nicely for ministerial Instagram feeds. The interactive dialogues cover: Water for People; Water for Prosperity; Water for Planet; Water for Cooperation; Water in Multilateral Processes; and, Investment for Water. They are more important in that they are likely to frame the ideas that will go forward to the 2028 UN Water Conference in Dushanbe, where the post-2030 agenda for water (i.e. post-SDG6) will be discussed. Despite being labelled as “interactive”, these dialogues are likely to be heavily scripted, and like an obscure Olympic sport, utterly baffling to onlookers without the support of an experienced commentator. Meanwhile, there are 234 official side meetings – each lasting 75 minutes – running 15 abreast throughout the event, covering every possible issue relating to water, from “How sports, music and arts inspire SDG 6 Action” to “Transforming laundry for water, women and prosperity”. There were more than 800 applications, so some unlikely bedfellows were squeezed together. The International Desalination and Reuse Association’s session on alternative water sources as a climate resilience strategy will be co-convened with Creators of Arab Union, while Veolia has been put together with Xylem to talk about scaling up water technologies.
   

5. Oasis looks good – if you don’t suffer badge envy. Besides tradeshow-type pavilions, the Oasis area will host the Abu Dhabi Water and Power Week: three consecutive one-day summits respectively addressing: Policy and Regulation; Finance and Investment; and Technology and Investment. You can register for it here. It is likely to be a high-powered event, given the calibre of speakers available. It is also likely to be more coherent and useful from a water business perspective than the occult rituals of the UN event. The downside is badge envy. Most of those who signed up for Blue Zone passes will quickly get bored of the UN event and instead find sport in taunting those without Blue Zone passes in the Oasis area. Only Americans will be able to feel self-important without a Blue Zone badge. Their government is pointedly not participating in the UN Water Conference, but the State Department does think that the Oasis area will be a great place to do business.
   

6. It will focus the world’s attention on water, but your message will be lost. News organisations love water stories, but they need an excuse to run them. The UN Water Conference is the perfect excuse to run a feature. This is probably the reason why 6,038 organisations applied to attend the event. They thought that Abu Dhabi would be a great publicity opportunity for their latest initiative. What they didn’t bargain on is 6,037 other organisations choosing that day to make an announcement. Everyone is there to talk, and no one is there to listen.
   

7. Nevertheless, it works from a stakeholder management perspective. Making an announcement at the UN Water Conference is imperative for every NGO needing to convince their stakeholders that they are doing important work. The LinkedIn post, the Instagram feed, and the photo for the annual report represent a job well done, regardless of the fact that no one in Abu Dhabi was paying attention. For businesses, an announcement in Abu Dhabi is about brand positioning. It says that your business is part of the global effort to make water work, reassuring customers and employees that you are on the side of the angels.
   

8. It is a great place for networking, as long as you are not shortsighted. It is unusual to have so many decision-makers in the same place at the same time. However, the event is absolutely not set up with networking in mind. Your best hope of buttonholing a government minister or a water agency head (if that is the kind of person you want to meet) will be to position yourself in a high-traffic area (e.g. the entrances and coffee queues) and have eagle eyes for names on badges.
   

9. Utilities don’t have a place at the table. The UN is led by central governments, but water is usually the responsibility of municipal utilities. It is assumed that country delegations somehow represent the utility sector, but in reality, utilities have almost no voice at the event. The same goes for the infrastructure supply chain that the utilities rely on, and indeed the industrial and agriculture water users who account for 90% of freshwater use.
   

10. GWI is pushing three initiatives at the event. Despite all the cynicism, I do think that the UN has an important role in shaping the global dialogue around water. There are three ways in which I will be using the event to promote things that are important to GWI readers:

The Scaling Water Reuse initiative: we want an aspirational global target for water reuse to be on the post-2030 agenda for water. I think we are pushing on an open door. There seems to be a groundswell of opinion that reuse is the most planet-friendly way to build resilience into the water cycle. We need key figures at the conference to articulate this.

Water finance: in the past, UN events have focused on aid commitments from the Global North to support the water ambitions of the Global South. Nobody thinks that will be an outcome from this event. Instead, much of the debate will focus on increasing the bankability of water infrastructure projects. The World Bank’s Water Forward initiative is at the centre of the push for institutional and governance reforms to deliver greater bankability. Our contribution is at the utility level, through 300 Water Leaders, and my involvement in the Urban Water Catalyst Initiative. My objective is to ensure that the key players on the government/diplomatic side understand how the finance world views water as an investment proposition.

Private sector engagement with the UN: At last week’s UN Water meeting in Rome, we presented the results of the GWI survey of private sector attitudes to engagement with UN entities involved in water. There was a lot of interest: all the UN agencies seem to understand that the private sector has a key role to play in finance, innovation, and as a user of water on the industrial side. The UN Special Envoy on Water, Retno Marsudi, has also picked up the issue: she published a report – Accelerating Water Action Through UN-Private Sector Engagement – during New York Climate Week last month. The difficulty is working out the correct mode for collaboration. We need to push forward with this dialogue in Abu Dhabi.