UCL Open Environment | Collection:

Special series on Water and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Water is one of the Earth’s most distinguishing features. It is essential to life. It is a fundamental part of our society and economy. We need it to drink, to supply food from land and sea, and support businesses of many kinds. We need water to help make things and to help deal with waste. And we need water for our environment. In our world there are tensions between all these different uses of water that are not always being addressed. Water shortages could be made worse with our changing climate leading to more frequent or even more severe droughts. Likewise, flooding could become worse because of increased periods of intense rainfall or because a combination of factors to which sea-level rise (driven by ocean expansion and polar melt) will add makes coastal erosion and flooding that much more of an issue.

So how do we move on from the position we have now where some people and environments are facing water scarcity and others, periodically, facing floods, some of which are devastating; a position where others lack the water or the systems they need to ensure sanitation standards are high enough to avoid disease; and a position where there is no agreed way to balance the competing demands for water other than by perhaps sometimes attempting to trade-off between competing needs.

Articles published in this series are directly concerned with one or a combination of the SDGs relevant to the uses of water interaction or form a nexi with those Environment focused SDGs that in a sense host the sources of water on the planet (SDGs 6, 13, 14 and 15). Publications aim to also examine progress on all these SDGs viewed from the perspective of the global water cycle and whether the indicators and targets and evidence available to us all /deliver a more balanced view of water and how it might be best managed in future, are also welcomed for submission.