One Water Summit Declaration

Published on 05/12/2024

Since the dawn of time, I've been falling, running, trickling, cascading and swirling. Fresh or salty, alive or dormant, I am water, the essence of life. But today, global warming is disrupting the brakes on my cycle: scarcity and drought here, overabundance and floods there, I'm becoming a source of disaster, and at times even conflict. To preserve me, the world is rallying around the One Water Vision agreement, whith the SCO is reaffirming its commitment to share its space-based solutions for the benefit of all.

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Preserving the quantity and quality of water resources has become one of the major challenges for current and future generations. © Getty Images

On December 3, 2024, the sixteenth session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16) was held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. On the sidelines, the Presidents of the French Republic, the Republic of Kazakhstan and the World Bank, in partnership with the Crown Prince and Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia, co-organized the first One Water Summit to place water policies at the heart of the multilateral agenda and international cooperation.

One Water Summit Declaration

" We, the signatories of the Charter, affirm our shared commitment to taking concerted action at the national, regional, and international levels to scale up water management related solutions that have been developed by SCO projects."

As a natural extension of the SCO's raison d'être, the One Water Summit Declaration reinforces its commitment to take action by developing and sharing operational solutions based on satellite data to :

Monitoring the load of water retention systems around the world, likewise the StockWater project;
Water quality monitoring, likewise the XTremQuality project;
Soil moisture monitoring and agricultural applications, likewise the Space4Irrig and BOSCO projects;
Management of extreme weather events, likewise the Band-SOS and Gade Lapli projects.

1 Stock Water automatically calculates water volumes and filling rates for dams. 2 XtremQuality can locate water reservoirs as small as 1 ha and report on their quality. 3 Space4Irrig monitors crop irrigation to anticipate water needs and stresses. 4 BOSCO measures surface soil moisture. 5 Band-SOS predicts coastal flooding and maps the vulnerability of exposed populations. 6 Gade Lapli enables real-time management of hydrometeorological crises. © SCO

There are still many examples of water-related SCO projects, such as OpHySE and its real-time monitoring platforms for watersheds in French Guiana (operational) and the Mozambique Channel (underway), or ATTEST, which is developing a prevention system designed to reduce the cumulative impact of dry periods and intense local rainfall.

By the end of 2024, a third of the 95 SCO projects focus on the 3 main water-related themes: water resource management, drought and flood prevention/prediction.

"In conclusion, with unwavering dedication and collective resolve, we pledge to uphold the principles enshrined in this declaration and translate them into tangible actions that safeguard our precious water resources for present and future generations."

👉Consult the One Water Summit Declaration

One Water Vision Agreement

This SCO declaration is part of the first of the "three pillars of action" of the One Water Vision agreement proposed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO) and the International Research Consortium (IRC):

Strengthening operational services through scientific and technical cooperation programs, with active involvement from the private sector.
Creating reliable datasets will be developed in collaboration with users by field-testing earth observation datasets at pilot sites around the world.
Developing new approaches through enhanced scientific and technical cooperation.

Just as the SCO is part of the UN's Agenda 2030, One Water Vision, a scientific cooperation agreement for water management using satellite Earth observation, is being implemented "to develop solutions to address the global water crisis, and in particular to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6) on clean water and sanitation, and its interconnections with the other SDGs".

In this context, two new satellite missions are particularly cited for the critical nature of their data:

Active since 2024, SWOT is the first satellite to provide hydrological data at high spatial and temporal resolution, and will be used to monitor surface water stocks in lakes and flows in rivers and glaciers.
TRISHNA, scheduled for launch in 2026, will monitor drought 3-4 times a week using thermal infrared observations of vegetation cover.

Monitoring the evolution of water stocks in the world's lakes and reservoirs using SWOT.

👉 Consult the One Water Vision Agreement