The theme for World Water Week 2026, Water for People and Progress, highlights the critical role of water in a rapidly changing climate.

While the 2024 theme explored Water for a Peaceful and Sustainable Future, and last year’s theme focused on Water for Climate Action, so too does the 2026 theme address the pressing issue of our time. Following the driest summer on record for much of Europe, water security has come to the forefront of academic and public discourse.

With a focus on a just and equitable water-secure future for people and the planet, this year the theme has a strong emphasis on climate justice, equity, and the needs of all people, especially vulnerable communities. 

Advancing our understanding of the global water cycle

UCL Open Environment has launched three calls for papers addressing water related issues. All articles are published open access and are free to read to anyone. Readers will also find all previous preprint versions during the peer review process, along with the peer review reports, alongside the final version of record published after peer review. You can also read more about how the journal works, the aims and scope, and how to contribute to the journal on our website.

Articles published in the Water and the UN SDGs series are directly concerned with one or a combination of the SDGs relevant to the uses of water interaction. Publications examine progress on all these SDGs viewed from the perspective of the global water cycle and whether the indicators, targets and evidence available to us all deliver a more balanced view of water and how it might be best managed in future.

The Community responses to climate change collection focuses on responses to climate change taking place in or led by non-traditional ‘research’ communities. It aims to provide a platform to record and disseminate the insights from many community-level and community-led research projects that are currently poorly visible (or completely invisible) to many researchers and practitioners. Articles address food security, capturing knowledge from local farmers and climate change awareness in vulnerable communities.

Planetary health is an agenda setting series that confronts the central questions of planetary health through an urban lens. We face the triple planetary crisis, that is crises in climate, biodiversity and water, that put our planet's health at risk and threaten millions of people. This series positions cities as the primary locus where planetary challenges and transformative responses converge.

Get involved!

This is an opportunity to shape a growing evidence base at a moment when cities must lead the way in safeguarding Planetary Health. Read our call for papers for more information, including how to submit.

Peer review for the journal. Preprints are available for open peer review. If you are interested in providing a review, please get in touch with the editorial office at uclopen.environment@ucl.ac.uk.

Stay in touch!

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