World Water Day – held on 22 March every year since 1993 – raises awareness and inspires action to help the 2.2 billion people who are living today without access to safe water.
At UNU-MERIT, we’re excited to share that we have three World Water Day (WWD) events coming up that all aim to raise awareness and inspire action around this year’s WWD theme, which is about accelerating change to solve the water and sanitation crisis.
The first two of these events are virtual side events of the UN 2023 Water Conference taking place in New York next week:
💧 Monday 20 March at 15:00 – 16:30 CET (online)
Water for Climate Mental Health Resilience – Integrating inclusive water strategies in climate services
This session aims to enhance understanding of the following elements by assessing gaps and needs in the existing support mechanisms through capturing reflections from different geographic regions, voices from practices and youth and their capacities to integrate support services in water strategies:
- Interlinkages of water insecurity, water-related disasters, climate risks and mental health and psychosocial well-being, with a focus on vulnerability factors and inequalities.
- Environmental degradation and biodiversity and its impact on mental health (e.g., climate change anxiety, eco-grief, solastalgia).
- What unique advantages could the youth and future generations have/contribute to the vision of an inclusive climate-resilient future?
- Multi-sectoral and community-based approaches on how we can build and implement smart water strategies in climate services to enable building mental health resilience for all.
💧 Tuesday 21 March at 15:30 – 17:00 CET (online)
Accelerating Circular Economy Based Solutions to Support SDG 6 Implementation in the LAC Region
In this session, we call for a collective action to create a circular economy (CE) with regards to water strategies in the Latin American region. A coalition to integrate circular economy-focused advances and innovations within the theme of water for sustainable development – this includes both social and economic development in urban areas as well as regional development.
During this session, global and regional experts will showcase their insights and best practices, share challenges, analyse gaps and needs to explore a specific plan to deploy a framework for effective integration of CE in future water strategies.
Finally, UNU-MERIT is holding an interactive conference next Wednesday (details below), the aim of which is to facilitate a conversation between planners, youth, scholars and citizens in order to better understand the drivers of urban flooding and the changes we need to bring about to build resilience.
💧 Wednesday 22 March at 12:30 – 14:30 CET (hybrid)
Urban Sustainability: How can cities tackle floods?
Registration links for all three events can be found on the event pages (hyperlinked above).
Feeling inspired to learn more about what you can do on a personal level regarding the water and sanitation crisis? Check out some key actions you can take here!
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The opinions expressed here are the author’s own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of UNU.
MEDIA CREDITS
iStock/Kurosuke; UN Photo/Martine Perret; UN Women/Narendra Shrestha