Dear excellences, dear colleagues,

As a co-chair of this dialogue, together with my distinguished Chinese colleague, Commissioner Zu Leiming, it is my pleasure to open our Interactive dialogue 2 at the Dushanbe Water Conference focusing on water for sustainable development. The international community is united by water and I would like to thank our Tajik hosts for bringing us together.

Water is a prerequisite for economic and human development. No individual can live a dignified life without access to adequate water, sanitation and hygiene. And in order for water to be a positive long-term factor for development, we need a stronger inclusion of sustainable practices such as a circular economy nexus and in sustainable consumption and production, including across the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem (WEFE).

I hope that the following panels will help us to deepen our commitment to integrated water resources management,  notably in the WEFE context and in the source-to-sea approach. Working together in more transformative ways across sectors to avoid negative trade-offs is a key to achieving these goals, which are in themselves overarching individual sectors. Nature-based solutions, ecosystem-friendly approaches and their role in ensuring sufficient water supply across sectors, and particularly for the agricultural sector which consumes a vast majority of water, are essential.

We must remember that this also applies at the transboundary level, where well-designed water regimes can contribute to multiple water policy objectives and help reconcile water resource-sharing riparians and different sectors’ water needs.

Today we have an impressive line-up of experts, seeking solutions to the vast challenges we face. And the aspects of valuing water, the water-energy-food nexus and sustainable economic and urban development are key questions for future change. I expect that today’s dialogue will inspire us to continue the good work done in this area.
And as we explicitly want this to be both interactive and a dialogue, I would like to maybe propose to initial questions for our panellists to consider:

1.    How do we mainstream water for sustainable development:

• both across the UN Water Conferences
• and other global processes such as the World Water Forum, Dushanbe Process or One Water Summit?

2.    How can we emphasize the role of water in realizing the SDGs and implementing the Rio COPs?

I thank you and look forward to our exchanges.