Water Connects: Turning Convention Ambition into Coherent Action

The conventions already meet in the water cycle

IUCN’s policy priorities for the 2026 UN Water Conference  recognise the role of water, highlighting that water should become an organising principle for sustainable development, linking planning and decision-making across sectors rather than remaining confined within the traditional water sector.

The same principle could help us think differently about cooperation between the international environmental conventions.

From convention synergy to hydrological coherence

There is increasing political interest in “synergies” among the Rio Conventions, and between these agreements and the Convention on Wetlands. At the Convention on Wetlands COP15, for example, Contracting Parties adopted Resolution XV.4 in 2025 calling for stronger collaboration with other multilateral environmental agreements, including cooperation intended to reduce duplication and strengthen implementation.

The direction makes sense. Governments face limited financial resources, stretched institutions and environmental risks that increasingly interact. But synergy can easily become an institutional objective rather than an environmental one. More joint meetings, reporting arrangements, working groups and secretariat coordination do not automatically deliver better outcomes.

Water offers a different starting point.

Instead of first trying to harmonise institutions, governments could ask whether policies developed under different conventions are hydrologically coherent.

A simple test could be applied to major climate, biodiversity, land and development decisions: what does this intervention do to the water cycle? What does that mean for ecosystems and people? Does it reinforce, or undermine, other national commitments?

An adaptation programme restoring upstream landscapes may improve soil moisture, reduce erosion, protect downstream wetlands and strengthen drought resilience. Those outcomes can contribute simultaneously to climate adaptation, land restoration, biodiversity conservation and water security.

But the reverse can also happen. Large-scale afforestation intended to sequester carbon can, depending on species and location, reduce downstream water availability. Hydropower can contribute to decarbonisation while fragmenting rivers and damaging freshwater biodiversity. Expanded irrigation can improve food production while reducing environmental flows.

Water therefore does something particularly valuable: it exposes both synergies and trade-offs.

A credible synergy agenda should not pretend every intervention is a win-win. It should make these interactions visible early enough for governments to manage them.

The basin is where many of these relationships become real

If the water cycle provides the organising principle, river basins, aquifers and landscapes provide important geographies for implementation.

This does not mean transferring every environmental decision to river basin organisations. Some responsibilities properly remain national, municipal, sectoral or local.  But a basin reveals connections that conventional administrative structures frequently obscure.

A ministry of agriculture may see deteriorating soils and declining productivity. A climate agency may see increasing drought risk. A biodiversity authority may see species loss. A wetland authority may see ecological degradation. A water ministry may see deteriorating water quality or falling groundwater levels. A finance ministry may see rising expenditure on floods, drought response and water treatment.

Administratively, these can appear to be separate problems.  Hydrologically, they may be different symptoms of deterioration within the same system.

This is why multi-level governance matters. International commitments need to connect with national policy, basin institutions, technical agencies, local authorities and the people using and managing land and water. IUCN’s experience in water governance has repeatedly demonstrated the importance of connecting those levels rather than assuming that international agreements automatically produce implementation on the ground.

Wetlands provide a natural demonstration of synergy

Wetlands are particularly useful for showing what this approach means in practice.

A restored floodplain can improve freshwater biodiversity, reconnect river systems, reduce flood peaks and support groundwater recharge.

Protecting peatlands can maintain important habitats, protect hydrological functions and avoid significant greenhouse gas emissions.

Mangrove restoration can support biodiversity, fisheries, coastal resilience and carbon storage.

Groundwater-dependent wetlands connect aquifer management directly with biodiversity conservation and surrounding land use.

This gives the Convention on Wetlands a potentially important role in cooperation across international environmental agendas. But the argument should not simply be that wetlands represent another constituency that needs a seat at the table.

The stronger argument is that wetlands are among the places where climate, biodiversity, land and water objectives physically meet.

IUCN’s UN Water Conference position already calls for freshwater ecosystems to be recognised as natural infrastructure and for greater restoration and protection of rivers, groundwater, wetlands and lakes.

That provides a practical foundation for convention cooperation.

The Freshwater Challenge can turn this concept into action

The Freshwater Challenge provides perhaps the clearest existing opportunity to demonstrate what this approach could look like.

Launched at the 2023 UN Water Conference, the country-led initiative aims to restore 300,000 kilometres of degraded rivers and 350 million hectares of degraded wetlands by 2030, while strengthening protection of freshwater ecosystems important for biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Those numbers are important. But the Challenge’s larger potential lies in the way it is designed.

Its objectives are to integrate, substantiate and accelerate freshwater action. Countries are encouraged to incorporate freshwater restoration and conservation targets into existing national processes, including National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans, Nationally Determined Contributions, National Adaptation Plans, Land Degradation Neutrality targets, sustainable development plans and national wetland plans.

This is convention synergy translated into implementation.

A country does not need another international treaty commitment. It can identify rivers, wetlands and catchments where interventions contribute simultaneously to commitments already made under climate, biodiversity, land, wetlands and sustainable development frameworks.

The Freshwater Challenge could therefore become a practical expression of water as an organising principle: identifying common priorities, aligning national plans, mobilising investment and demonstrating where international commitments can be delivered together.

But it should remain an implementation platform, not become another institutional layer.  Its strength lies precisely in helping countries deliver existing commitments more coherently.

Land management completes the picture

Water policy has traditionally concentrated heavily on “blue water” in rivers, reservoirs and aquifers. But much of the water cycle operates through landscapes.

“Green water”, the moisture held in soils and vegetation and used by plants, is fundamental to agriculture, ecosystems and drought resilience.

Soil condition determines infiltration and water retention. Vegetation influences evapotranspiration, runoff and groundwater recharge. Agricultural practices affect water quality and downstream ecosystems.

This creates a direct connection between water governance and the objectives of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.  IUCN’s proposal for greater attention to green water and whole-cycle water governance therefore deserves to be understood as more than a specialist water issue.

A whole-water-cycle perspective links soil, vegetation, groundwater, rivers, lakes and wetlands. It makes the relationship between land restoration, drought resilience, biodiversity and water security much clearer.  But it requires agriculture and forestry, and other economic sectors, to recognise impacts, dependencies, and accountabilities for water security and insecurity, as a consequence of land-use.

Finance could make synergy tangible

Ultimately, this approach has to change investment decisions.

Too often, countries develop separate climate, biodiversity, land and wetland projects in the same geography, each with different funding sources, indicators and institutional arrangements.

A water-centred approach offers another possibility.

Governments could develop basin and landscape investment portfolios based on a common diagnosis of hydrological, ecological and land-related risks.

One portfolio might include wetland restoration, improved soil management, groundwater recharge, river reconnection, environmental flows, pollution reduction, agricultural water management and natural flood management.

Different parts of the portfolio could still attract different finance. Climate finance could support adaptation. Biodiversity finance could support ecosystem restoration. Land degradation resources could support soil and catchment rehabilitation. Development banks could support infrastructure. Governments could fund regulatory and institutional functions. Companies could contribute through credible basin-level water stewardship.

The objective is not to force everything into one enormous integrated project.

It is to ensure that different investments contribute to a coherent outcome for the same water system.  Integration of outcomes does not require integration of every financing institution.

Be ambitious about implementation, cautious about architecture

There is an important political boundary here.

We should pursue shared evidence and interoperable data aggressively. National climate, biodiversity, land, wetland and water plans should increasingly be tested for hydrological coherence. Joint implementation and investment should expand where there are genuine shared outcomes. Cooperation between existing convention mechanisms and focal points should be strengthened where it improves implementation.

But that does not mean that harmonised treaty obligations, merged reporting systems or new international institutions are automatically desirable.  The conventions have different mandates, constituencies and political histories. Attempting institutional convergence could consume considerable political capital without necessarily improving environmental outcomes.

IUCN’s experience in water governance suggests that effective cooperation tends to be incremental, context-specific and built on existing institutions and incentives. That same discipline could apply internationally.

Water as the connector

The opportunity is not to create another environmental silo around water.  It is the opposite.

Water can help expose where existing silos no longer make sense.

The climate, biodiversity, land and wetlands conventions each have important and distinct mandates. But their implementation happens in the same countries, landscapes and ecosystems.  The water cycle runs through all of them.

Using water as an organising principle can help governments identify where commitments reinforce each other, where they conflict, where finance can generate multiple outcomes and where trade-offs need to be addressed openly.

Initiatives such as the Freshwater Challenge give us somewhere practical to start.

We do not necessarily need another layer of international machinery to demonstrate convention synergy. We need to make the commitments we already have work together more effectively in the places where people and nature experience them.

Water can be the glue between those ambitions because nature has already connected them. Our governance, finance and institutions now need to catch up.