EESC Contribution to the UN Water Conference 2026: from the EU Blue Deal and Water Resilience Strategy to global water action

Key points - UN Water Conference 2026

The EU Youth Test at the EESC was applied to this opinion. The IWA  was chosen by a group of interested youth organisations to represent all of them during the opinion-making process.

Key points

The EESC:

• Underlines the importance of the UN Water Conference 2026 to make water resilience a global priority, and calls for a worldwide paradigm shift from linear water use to circular systems, recognising water as a public good with social, environmental and economic value.
• Calls for a horizontal governance approach integrating water across sectors and levels of government at global level with the transversal involvement of civil society.
• Calls for the international community to unequivocally condemn attacks against essential water infrastructure, which is indispensable to the survival of civilians, and recognise it as a war crime.
• Recommends systematically applying a ‘Water Test’ in all relevant EU and global policy initiatives, to assess their impact on water resources, water efficiency and water resilience.
• Considers water a public good and underlines that affordability of water for vulnerable groups is critical to ensure water justice worldwide. 
• Stresses that achieving water resilience requires a fundamental shift in behaviour across all sectors of society, including by adapting agricultural and industrial practises, reinforcing climate adaptation and conserving wetlands.
• Considers nature-based solutions, including wetlands, to be critical infrastructure for water resilience and to be embedded in all thematic dialogues for the UN Water Conference 2026.
• Calls for a mobilisation of public and private capital to support a robust pipeline of bankable SDG6 projects. 
• Calls for more support for water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) through integrated climate-resilient approaches combining infrastructure development, governance and capacity building, paying particular attention to vulnerable and marginalised communities.
• Considers that, in the event of conflicts over water use, priority should be given to the drinking water supply.
• Calls for the transition towards a water-smart society to be accelerated globally.
• Advocates the establishment of global targets to improve water efficiency by at least 10% by 2030 and to significantly increase water reuse levels across all sectors by the same year.
• Recommends developing harmonised indicators, monitoring mechanisms and reporting frameworks, to track progress on water resilience and ensure accountability at global level.