F or thousands of years, human beings have farmed the earth and built great civilizations. But we have failed to take care of the planet. Our actions have negatively impacted the water cycle and with climate change, things are getting worse. The GCA State and Trends on Adaptation contain frightening statistics and warnings. Water has the potential to trigger progress throughout society. Take the example of Rotterdam. Today it is a city transformed by innovation with water resilience as part of its DNA.

The mainstreaming of water adaptation is necessary to accelerate a system-wide coherence on water across multiple agendas. Many adaptation practices and approaches exist already, but as IPCC observes, the effort is fragmented and inadequate. At the same time, many policy actors and platforms are available to drive a transformative change, such as the COPs and the upcoming UN Water 2023 Conference in New York.

The Water Adaptation Community is working to promote mainstreaming of water adaptation and to accelerate understanding and action in policy and in practice.

This series of videos is a call to action to mainstream water climate adaptation at a series of international events such COP27, the UN 2023 Water Conference and COP28.