IAHS Has The Floor at UN 2023 Water Conference

The IAHS Science for Water Solutions decade is recognised as a stepping stone towards the UN sustainable development goals. We are well aligned with the UN actions and together we can make an impact on the global movement.

We were represented at the UN 2023 Water Conference 22-24 March 2023 by Berit Arheimer (President), Christophe Cudennec (Secretary General), and Salvatore Grimaldi (Vice President). After contributing to the shaping of the conference in our capacity as Partner of UN Water, we had an explicit participation in several sessions and side events in New York. In particular, Berit Arheimer discussed, with representatives of the IAHS' parent organisation ISC - International Science Council, UNESCO, WMO, UNDP, UNEP, UNCCD, IAEA and Ministers of several countries around Korea, the contribution of organised science to the proposed Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Water Sustainability. The under-shaping IAHS Science for Solutions decade HELPING confirms to be a timely and relevant community-driven mechanism to feed #WaterAction.

The official statement and commitment by IAHS for Water Actions reads:

The International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS) has 10,000 members from 150 countries and is part of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics, and of the International Science Council.
IAHS strongly support the ideas on regular Global water assessments (similar to IPCC), early warnings for all, water-centric decision support, and to govern water and ecosystems as common goods.
IAHS recognise the problem with water issues being spread over many actors at all scales, AND likewise, the scientific knowledge - of drivers, impacts, solutions, responses in the water cycle - is also fragmented. We lack scientific synthesis and systems analysis, and we lack scientific messages between scientists, across disciplines and between scientists and practitioners.
Therefore, IAHS now commits to lead and coordinate a Science for Solutions Decade (2023-2033), and we have agreed to call it HELPING – “Hydrology Engaging Local People IN one Global world”. The aim is solutions for the water crisis, leaving no catchment or hydrologist behind, in search for scientific evidence to understand the hydrological processes at local and global scales, their interactions and diversity.
IAHS will organise this decade as a bottom-up process empowered by local hydrologists and scientists using open science and merging local and big data. IAHS believe that scientific sharing and collaboration can be a game changer, when solving local water problems with too much, too little or too dirty. Right now the process is open for suggesting actions and the Decade will kick-off in July 2023 at IUGG General Assembly in Berlin.

With this initiative, we will coordinate concerted actions from the global scientific community - HELPING to overcome the water crisis.