In a message to mark the Day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that climate and water are “inextricably linked. Both lie at the heart of global goals on sustainable development, climate change and disaster risk reduction”.

“Water”, he continued, “is one of the most precious commodities of the 21st century. National Meteorological and Hydrological Services will be central to efforts to ‘count every drop, because every drop counts’”.

We can’t manage what we can’t measure: the importance of data

The increasingly unpredictable, changing weather patterns are likely to lead to more “water stress” which, in turn, will affect sustainable development and security.

The effects of unpredictable weather were described, in detail, in the WMO’s flagship weather report, the Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019, released on 10 March. The study showed that climate change is having a major effect on all aspects of the environment, as well as on the health and well being of the global population.

In 2019, extreme weather events, some of which were unprecedented in scale, took place in many parts of the world.

The new global report calls, among others, for concrete efforts to address rising water stress and improve the efficiency of water use in agriculture and industry, and it outlines actions in three areas: first, enabling people to adapt to the impacts of climate change; second, improving the resilience of livelihoods; and, third, reducing the drivers of climate change.

Lackling water (in)security and climate change, two of the most critical crises the world will continue facing over the next several decades, ­the 2020 UN World Water Development Report, compiled by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in collaboration with UN-Water, provides decision-makers with knowledge and tools to craft sustainable water policies, and calls for scaling up investment to put them into practice.

“The word ‘water’ rarely appears in international climate agreements, even though it plays a key role in issues such as food security, energy production, economic development and poverty reduction,” said UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay.

She stressed: “This potential of water must be explored, given that our actions to reduce global warming are currently lagging behind our ambitions, despite wide adherence to the Paris Agreement...the report shows that water does not need to be a problem – it can be part of the solution. Water can support efforts to both mitigate and adapt to climate change.”

'Everyone has a role to play’

UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his message on World Water Day said, “everyone has a role to play,” and called on all stakeholders to increase climate action and invest in robust adaptation measures for water sustainability.

By limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, he said, “the world will be in a much better position to manage and solve the water crisis that we all face.”

This year’s World Water Day focuses on water and climate change. With 2020 a make-or-break year for climate action, this focus is timely – UN chief António Guterres

“Water is the primary medium through which we perceive the effects of climate disruption, from extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, to glacial melting, saltwater intrusion and sea level rise,” he said.

This will negatively affect health and productivity and act as a threat multiplier for instability and conflict. The solution is clear, said the UN chief.

“We must urgently scale up investments in healthy watersheds and water infrastructure, with dramatic improvements in the efficiency of water use, said Mr. Guterres, adding that the world must anticipate and respond to climate risks at every level of water management.

Above all, said the Secretary-General, “we must use this year and COP26 in Glasgow to bend the emissions curve and create a secure foundation for water sustainability,” he stressed, referring to the upcoming UN climate change conference, currently scheduled for next November 2020.

‘A water crisis is a global crisis’

In her message on the Day, UNESCO chief Azoulay said that with four billion people worldwide forced to contend with water scarcity, “without sustainable access to water, we will be unable to achieve goals such as quality education or the development of more prosperous, fairer societies.”

“Given the urgency of the situation, the coming decade needs to be one of action,” she declared.

The 2020 Report, she said, sets out “concrete solutions for ensuring access to water for all: improved water resources management, the mitigation of water-related hazards, easier and more sustainable access to sanitation.”;

Action to save the planet and its water will only be useful if future generations were fully involved, including through UNESCO member States incorporating issues related to environmental education in their school curricula.

'We simply cannot afford to wait’

The report, launched in Paris and Geneva, echoed the UN officials’ call on States to make more concrete commitments to address the challenge, and warned that climate change will affect the availability, quality and quantity of water needed for basic human needs, thus undermining enjoyment of the basic rights to safe drinking water and sanitation for billions of people.

Such a deterioration of the situation would only hinder achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6), which is part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, according to which access to safe drinking water and sanitation must be guaranteed for all within 10 years.

This will be a considerable challenge: ­2.2 billion people currently do not have access to safely managed drinking water, and 4.2 billion, or 55 per cent of the world’s population, are without safely managed sanitation.

There are solutions for managing water and climate in a more coordinated manner and every sector of society has a role to play. We simply cannot afford to wait – UN-Water Chair Gilbert F. Houngbo

UNESCO has also said that the critical need to substantially improve access to clean water for drinking and hygiene for billions of the world’s people has been further thrown into stark relief by the current deadly outbreak of COVID-19.

The 2020 World Water Development Reports reveals that water use has increased six-fold over the past century and is rising by about one per cent a year.

However, it is estimated that climate change, along with the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events – storms, floods and droughts, will aggravate the situation in countries already currently experiencing ‘water stress’ and generate similar problems in areas that have not been severely affected.

Furthermore, the report highlights the fact that poor water management tends to exacerbate the impacts of climate change, not only on water resources but on society as a whole.

The Chair of UN-Water, and President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Gilbert F. Houngbo, said: “There are solutions for managing water and climate in a more coordinated manner and every sector of society has a role to play. We simply cannot afford to wait.”

Adaptation, mitigation, finance

To this end, the report outlines a range of adaptation and mitigation measures, including natural, technical and technological measures to curb damage, and steps humans can take to effectively to limit greenhouse gas emissions, as well as protect the environment.;

The report also mentions innovative water management interventions such as fog capture, or more traditional ones such as wetland protection, as well as proven ‘conservation agriculture’ techniques. The ‘reuse’ of partially treated wastewater for agriculture and industry, without necessarily making it safe to drink, is another highlighted approach.

On the “crucial” question of financing, the authors argue that there are increasing opportunities to systematically integrate adaptation and mitigation planning into water-related investments, in order to make them more attractive to donors.

A good example of this is a Green Climate Fund project in Sri Lanka. This aims to improve irrigation systems in vulnerable village communities and promote climate-smart agricultural practices in three river basins, offering both climate adaptation and mitigation benefits, while conserving water and protecting drinking water sources.

Various water and climate change initiatives can also bring co-benefits such as job creation, improved public health, poverty reduction, promotion of gender equality and improved livelihoods, further enhancing their attractiveness to donors.

This year’s International Day highlights the connections between forests and biodiversity, following a 2019 UN report that sounded the alarm about accelerating species extinction rates, and the unprecedented speed at which ecosystems are declining.

Forests and our unsustainable choices

The UN chief pointed out that forests, and the global environment in general, are being severely degraded by the unsustainable way that we are consuming natural resources, which is accelerating biodiversity loss and exacerbating climate change.

Given the huge role that forests play in preserving life on earth and regulating the climate (see the text box below), Mr. Guterres expressed his alarm at the damage being wrought by drought conditions in many parts of the world, citing devastating forest fires, from the Canadian Arctic and Siberia to California and Australia.

On top of this, deforestation continues to occur, due to large-scale agriculture: even though the annual rate of deforestation has halved over the last 25 years, vast areas of forests continue to be lost.

“We must act quickly to reverse this. Safeguarding forests is part of the solution” said Mr. Guterres, urging all governments and businesses and civil society to “take urgent action to halt deforestation and restore degraded forests, so future, generations can enjoy a greener, healthier future”.

The report, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019, which is led by the UN weather agency WMO, contains data from an extensive network of partners.
​
It documents physical signs of climate change – such as increasing land and ocean heat, accelerating sea level rise and melting ice – and the knock-on effects on socio-economic development, human health, migration and displacement, food security, and land and marine ecosystems.

The warmest year so far was 2016, but that could be topped soon, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “Given that greenhouse gas levels continue to increase, the warming will continue. A recent decadal forecast indicates that a new annual global temperature record is likely in the next five years. It is a matter of time”, added the WMO Secretary-General.

In an interview with UN News, Mr. Taalas said that, there is a growing understanding across society, from the finance sector to young people, that climate change is the number one problem mankind is facing today, “so there are plenty of good signs that we have started moving in the right direction”.

“Last year emissions dropped in developed countries, despite the growing economy, so we have been to show that you can detach economic growth from emission growth. The bad news is that, in the rest of the world, emissions grew last year. So, if we want to solve this problem we have to have all the countries on board”.

Mr. Taalas added that countries still aren’t fulfilling commitments they made at the UN Paris climate conference in 2015, leaving the world currently on course for a four to five degree temperature increase by the end of this century: “there’s clearly a need for higher ambition levels if we’re serious about climate mitigation”.

Writing in the foreword to the report, UN chief António Guterres warned that the world is currently “way off track meeting either the 1.5°C or 2°C targets that the Paris Agreement calls for”, referring to the commitment made by the international community in 2015, to keep global average temperatures well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

A new annual global temperature record is likely in the next five years. It is a matter of time, said Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, WMO.

Several heat records have been broken in recent years and decades: the report confirms that 2019 was the second warmest year on record, and 2010-2019 was the warmest decade on record. Since the 1980s, each successive decade has been warmer than any preceding decade since 1850.

The warmest year so far was 2016, but that could be topped soon, said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas. “Given that greenhouse gas levels continue to increase, the warming will continue. A recent decadal forecast indicates that a new annual global temperature record is likely in the next five years. It is a matter of time”, added the WMO Secretary-General.

In an interview with UN News, Mr. Taalas said that, there is a growing understanding across society, from the finance sector to young people, that climate change is the number one problem mankind is facing today, “so there are plenty of good signs that we have started moving in the right direction”.

“Last year emissions dropped in developed countries, despite the growing economy, so we have been to show that you can detach economic growth from emission growth. The bad news is that, in the rest of the world, emissions grew last year. So, if we want to solve this problem we have to have all the countries on board”.

Mr. Taalas added that countries still aren’t fulfilling commitments they made at the UN Paris climate conference in 2015, leaving the world currently on course for a four to five degree temperature increase by the end of this century: “there’s clearly a need for higher ambition levels if we’re serious about climate mitigation”.

Australian wildfires spark global CO2 increase

Mr. Taalas noted that 2020 has seen the warmest January recorded so far, and that winter has been “unseasonably mild” in many parts of the northern hemisphere.

Ongoing warming in Antarctica saw large-scale ice melt and the fracturing of a glacier, with repercussions for sea level rise, and carbon dioxide emissions spiked following the devastating Australian bushfires, which spread smoke and pollutants around the world.

Australia’s 2018-2019 summer was the hottest ever recorded, reaching a peak of 41.9 degrees centigrade on December 18. Australia's seven hottest days on record, and nine of the 10 hottest, occurred in 2019.

The country was not the only place affected by extreme heat, or wildfires. Heat records were broken in several European countries, including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Even Nordic countries saw record-breaking temperatures, including Finland, which registered a high of 33.2 degrees in the capital, Helsinki.

Several high latitude regions, including Siberia and Alaska, saw high levels of fire activity, as did some parts of the Arctic, where it was previously extremely rare. Indonesia and neighbouring countries had their the most significant fire season since 2015, and total fire activity in South America was the highest since 2010.

The widespread impacts of ocean warming

Greenhouse gas emissions continued to grow in 2019, leading to increased ocean heat, and such phenomena as rising sea levels, the altering of ocean currents, melting floating ice shelves, and dramatic changes in marine ecosystems.

The ocean has seen increased acidification and deoxygenation, with negative impacts on marine life, and the wellbeing of people who depend on ocean ecosystems. At the poles, sea ice continues to decline, and glaciers shrunk yet again, for the 32nd consecutive year.

Between 2002 and 2016, the Greenland ice sheet lost some 260 Gigatonnes of ice per year, with a peak loss of 458 Gigatonnes in 2011/12. The 2019 loss of 329 Gigatonnes, was well above average.

Unprecedented floods and droughtsIn 2019, extreme weather events, some of which were unprecedented in scale, took place in many parts of the world. The monsoon season saw rainfall above the long-term average in India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and flooding led to the loss of some 2,200 lives in the region.

Parts of South America were hit by floods in January, whilst Iran was badly affected in late March and early April. In the US, total economic losses from flooding were estimated at around $20 billion. Other regions suffered a severe lack of water. Australia has its driest year on record, and Southern Africa, Central America and parts of South America received abnormally low rains.

2019 also saw an above-average number of tropical cyclones, with 72 in the northern hemisphere, and 27 in the southern hemisphere. Some notably destructive cyclones were Idai, which caused widespread devastation in Mozambique and the east coast of Africa; Dorian, which hit the Bahamas and remained almost stationary for some 24 hours; and Hagibis, which caused severe flooding in Japan.

The human cost

The changing climate is exerting a toll on the health of the global population: the reports shows that in 2019, record high temperatures led to over 100 deaths in Japan, and 1,462 deaths in France. Dengue virus increased in 2019, due to higher temperatures, which have been making it easier for mosquitoes to transmit the disease over several decades.

Following years of steady decline, hunger is again on the rise, driven by a changing climate and extreme weather events: over 820 million people were affected by hunger in 2018. The countries in the Horn of Africa were particularly affected in 2019, where the population suffered from climate extremes, displacement, conflict and violence. The region suffered droughts, then unusually heavy rains towards the end of the year, which was a factor in the worst locust outbreak in the past 25 years.

Worldwide, some 6.7 million people were displaced from their homes due to natural hazards – in particular storms and floods, such as the many devastating cyclones, and flooding in Iran, the Philippines and Ethiopia. The report forecasts an internal displacement figure of around 22 million people throughout the whole of 2019, up from 17.2 million in 2018.

COP26: time to aim high“We have to aim high at the next climate conference in Glasgow in November”, said Mr. Guterres, speaking at the launch of the report at UN Headquarters in New York, on Tuesday, referring to the 2020 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), due to be held in the Scottish City in November.

The UN chief called on all countries to demonstrate that emission cuts of 45 per cent from 2010 levels are possible this decade, and that net-zero emissions will be achieved by the middle of the century.

Four priorities for COP26 were outlined by Mr. Guterres: more ambitious national climate plans that will keep global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels; strategies to reach net zero emissions by 2050; a comprehensive programme of support for climate adaptation and resilience; and financing for a sustainable, green economy.

'We will not fight climate change with a virus'

'The UN chief also addressed the ongoing spread of COVID-19, in response to a question on its likely effect on the climate, given the resulting drop in economic activity and, consequently, emissions. Mr. Guterres firmly responded that "both require a determined response. Both must be defeated". 

Although emissions have been reduced, Mr. Guterres noted that "we will not fight climate change with a virus". In addition, he underlined the importance of not allowing the fight against the virus to distract from the need to defeat climate change, inequality and the many other problems the world is facing.

Whilst the disease is expected to be temporary, climate change, added the Secretary-General, has been a phenomenon for many years, and and will  "remain with us for decades and require constant action".

WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate
​

• The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2019 includes input from national meteorological and hydrological services, leading international experts, scientific institutions and United Nations agencies.
• The flagship report provides authoritative information for policy makers on the need for Climate Action.
• The World Meteorological Organization is the United Nations System’s authoritative voice on weather, climate and water.