United Nations water conferences: reflections and expectations

During the 1970s, the United Nations (UN) held a series of world conferences at high political levels on specific topics, to enhance global awareness of the magnitudes and extents of the problems and to formulate strategies to solve them. The topics of these conferences were complex and no single nation could solve them individually. The focus of the first of this new type of major conferences was on the Human Environment, in Stockholm, in 1972. It was followed in rapid succession by similar high-level global meetings on Population (Bucharest, 1974), Food (Rome, 1974), Women (Mexico City, 1975), Human Settlements (Vancouver, 1976), Water (Mar del Plata, 1977), Desertification (Nairobi, 1977), Science and Technology for Development (Vienna, 1979), and New and Renewable Sources of Energy (Nairobi, 1981). One of the co-authors of this editorial, Professor Biswas, attended all these conferences, primarily as the Senior Scientific Advisor to the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. Nearly all these conferences were initiated and then actively promoted by a government or governments and then ultimately approved by the UN General Assembly. For example, the Conference on Human Environment was suggested and promoted by Sweden. Later, it was approved by the UN General Assembly. In this sense, the Water Conference was an anomaly. The idea of this conference did not originate from any government but from three remarkable senior employees who floated the idea and then managed to get countries to propose it and finally get it approved by the UN General Assembly. This unsung trio was Vladimir Baum, Enzo Fano and Alagappa Alagappan, senior officials of a now-defunct UN body, Centre for National Resources, Energy and Transport. The Water Conference was officially first proposed in 1971 by the UN’s Committee on Natural Resources. It was then approved by the UN’s Economic and Social Council, in 1973. The UN General Assembly finally endorsed it in December 1975, under Resolution 3513 (XXX). The main objective of the conference was to promote a level of preparedness nationally, regionally and internationally, which would help the world to avoid a water crisis of global dimensions by the year 2000. Its goal, undoubtedly, was ambitious: to ensure the world had an adequate supply of water, of good quality, to meet the needs of a world population that was increasing and urbanizing, but also to seek improved economic and social conditions for all people within a little over two decades. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WATER RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT 2023, VOL. 39, NO. 2, 177–183 https://doi.org/10.1080/07900627.2023.2176655