Event
Source-to-sea Regional Dialogue: managing water resources from mountains to the ocean in South-East Europe and the Mediterranean
To foster life on our planet and enhance resilience to the climate crisis, we need to encourage a systemic vision around the interconnection of all water bodies. The source-to-sea approach directly addresses the linkages between land - including mountains as critical recharge areas - freshwater sources (rivers and aquifers), deltas, estuaries, coasts, nearshore and ocean ecosystems, leading to holistic natural resource management and economic development. This approach builds on an existing baseline of governance, planning and management of natural resources and their intersections. The intended outcome of the source-to-sea approach is to identify appropriate courses of action to address alterations of key flows, resulting in economic, social and environmental benefits.
In this context, the UNESCO Regional Bureau is organising a high-level Regional Dialogue with the aim of contributing to sustainable water management from source to sea, and also working through UNESCO sites such as Biosphere Reserves and Global Geoparks.
The dialogue will bring together a variety of stakeholders and will build on the outcomes of the global UN 2023 Water Conference, notably the side event ‘The Source to Sea Approach’ organised by UNESCO (New York, 23 March 2023), the SDG 6 Roundtable organised during the Regional Forum for Sustainable Development (Geneva, 30 March 2023), and the source-to-sea events organised in 2022 and 2023 at the heart of the Dolomites by the city of Venice in collaboration with UNESCO. The dialogue will seek to forward commitments from the region with the aim of accelerating efforts to meet SDGs 6 and 14, and present case studies to inspire and feed into future editions of the UN WWDR.
This initiative is mainly addressed to stakeholders of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP), its Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) and to partners from academia and the private sector, managers and freshwater/marine experts working in and for UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and Global Geoparks from South-East Europe and the Mediterranean. The event is also targeted at the broader UNESCO water family and IOC network from the region, including national authorities, researchers in climate resilience and freshwater/marine ecosystems, the private sector working on socio-environmental impacts and sustainable finance, education and youth networks, and regional freshwater/marine-related organisations.
