Water and Climate Pavilion at COP26

With the latest round of updated national climate plans, namely the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and in preparation for the first Global Stocktake in 2023, governments around the world are focused on how to bring about decisive action to meet their enhanced commitments under the Paris Agreement. We want to help.

Water experts have been engaging with climate leaders for twenty years, but we can bring a stronger voice together, especially as we seek to bring key messages that resonate in today’s times. The COVID-19 crisis illuminates, more than ever, the importance of integrated climate, water, and development solutions as we confront the triple challenge of ensuring healthy people, decent livelihoods, and a healthy planet.

COP26 arrives at an important moment to showcase a wide range of implementable and innovative climate solutions from around the world designed to help countries successfully reach their climate ambitions while ensuring access to safe, clean, and reliable water for people and ecosystems. The Water & Climate Pavilion is an opportunity for all water-related stakeholders to signal our strong, collective commitment to improving and enhancing national climate plans and ambitions to work across sectors to contribute transformative ideas, solutions and resources.

Programming at the Water & Climate Pavilion will target government leaders, intergovernmental/ multilateral representatives, civil society, and private sector stakeholders attending the COP.

More specifically, the Pavilion seeks to directly interface with national climate planners negotiators and experts representing energy, agriculture and industry, among others.

The majority of the world’s water is used outside the water and sanitation sector, in particular energy, agriculture, and industry. Therefore, engaging with those who are involved in setting mitigation and adaptation priorities and commitments articulated in national climate plans, especially in these sectors, will be critical and timely.

We invited all organizations, experts, and initiatives who were interested in contributing to an event in the Water & Climate Pavilion.
Thanks to the funding support from various core partners, we were delighted to confirm that we will not charge any fee for event organizers. We strongly encouraged applications from the Global South.

We are currently planning for both hybrid (in-person pavilion at COP26 plus virtual conference platform) and fully virtual scenarios until more concrete information is confirmed by the COP Bureau and the COP Presidency. Events at the Pavilion are highly likely to be virtual and therefore we encouraged any events to be planned as virtual events.

In order to ensure coherent, high-quality, and efficient project management, communication, and quality assurance across the Water & Climate Pavilion’s programming, the steering committee will review all Expressions of Interest and manage the curation of the Water & Climate Pavilion programme.