Climate mitigation cannot succeed without water

In her welcoming remarks, UNDPs Srilata Kammila underlined the severity of the situation “we are nowhere near the scale needed to reduce emissions”. She warned that on the current path “potentially our financial resources and technology are not going to be enough”, and further emphasized that “water is critical to alter our course with respect to climate change”.

Keynote speaker Johan Rockström kicked off his speech by stressing how freshwater challenges are connected to major global crises such as climate change, ecological challenges, the Covid-19 pandemic and violent conflict. Global warming leads to changes in the hydrological cycle which results in increased floods and droughts and heavily impacts livelihoods and economies.

Watch the launch at COP27

However, water is not only part of the challenge, but vital for mitigation solutions that work.  Factoring water into mitigation planning can offer vast opportunities for climate mitigation but can also help avoid major risks and unrealistic planning. One reason for this is that most mitigation measures are dependent on access to freshwater resources, which is, however, increasingly uncertain. This is one of the challenges that need to be factored in to make sure climate mitigation can work.