Water for Prosperity and Peace
Peace and prosperity through water
The 2024 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report highlights how developing and maintaining water security and equitable access to water services is essential to ensuring peace and prosperity for all.
Equitable access to water resources, to safe and affordable water supply and sanitation services, and to the multiple benefits they generate are essential to building and maintaining prosperous and peaceful societies. Recent events, from global epidemics to armed conflicts, have emphasized that the socio-political conditions under which water is supplied, managed, and used can change rapidly.
Water management needs to consider the new economic and social realities, including climate change and geopolitical changes and their implications on our water resources. Leveraging water for prosperity and peace therefore requires actions beyond the water domain.
Water equals abundance
Water nurtures prosperity by meeting basic human needs, supporting livelihoods and economic development, underpinning food and energy security, and defending environmental integrity:
- Economic prosperity – the capacity for an individual, company or society to improve its economic performance and/or standards of living, with particular focus on countries’ economic performance, including their overall productivity, in particular their water productivity, as well as income equality.
- Social well-being – the sufficiency of water services for supporting the health and welfare of all individuals, including the provision of safe drinking water, food security and cultural integrity, among others.
- Environmental integrity – the ability of the environment to maintain biophysical functions or services that support resilience and security under changing climate and social conditions.
Major global events and disruptions magnify water risks…
The impacts of climate change, geopolitical unrest, pandemics, mass migration, hyperinflation and other crises can exacerbate water access inequalities.
…but also create opportunities for cooperation and transformation
These trends and events also create policy windows, which can be used to enhance resilience and forge adaptive capacity. Fostering prosperity through water contributes to the achievement of peaceful outcomes.
Cooperation, peace and social stability
Water can contribute to peace by motivating cooperation and diplomacy.
However, inequalities in the allocation of water resources, in access to water supply and sanitation services, and in the distribution of social, economic, and environmental benefits can be counterproductive to peace and social stability.
Disputes linked to water can occur when demand exceeds supply, when availability is compromised due to pollution, when access to (and allocation of) water may be uncertain, when water supply and sanitation services are disrupted, or when water management institutions are inadequate.
Typically, water is not the cause of war, but it has most often been a tool, a target, or a victim of warfare. This is the case when there are attacks targeting civilian water infrastructure, including treatment plants, distribution systems and dams. International humanitarian law explicitly includes protections for a wide range of civilian infrastructure, including water systems.
Facts and Figures
Facts, figures and action examples
on the state of the world’s freshwater resources
Key messages
Contributing partners
UN-Water members that contributed to the UN World Water Development Report 2024
