Water Security 2015

9-11 December 2015

University of Oxford, UK

Water security has rapidly emerged as a defining global and local challenge to promote economic growth, human development and resource sustainability. Achieving and maintaining water security requires balancing often competing goals in an increasingly complex landscape of demographic, climatic, environmental, political, economic and social change.

This three-day international conference convened leading global thinkers and practitioners from government, enterprise, civil society and academia to advance and debate risk-based analysis of water security. The first day assessed water security from the perspective of sustainable growth, based on the GWP/OECD report Securing Water, Sustaining Growth. The second and third days advanced a risk-based framework for poverty alleviation with the launch of the DFID-funded programme REACH: Improving water security for the poor.

The conference discussed how a risk-based framework charts pathways to sustainable growth and reduce poverty; reviewed the state of water security knowledge in Africa and South Asia; and helped build a global science-practitioner partnership to design new approaches to sustainably deliver water security for millions of poor people.

Visit the conference website to access presentations, video and audio from sessions.