The World Economic Forum recently named water crisis the world’s number one risk for the next 10 years for its potential impact on people and industry. Indeed, as the global community grapples with climate change – and environmental change of all kinds – understanding the fundamental nature if water to human society is crucial. The input report for this year’s World Water Week, released yesterday by the Stockholm International Water Institute, in fact argues that getting water management right is a prerequisite for sustainable development.

The report, Water for Development: Charting a Water Wise Path, provides perspectives from key organizations and researchers involved in water and development such as the UN Development Program, UN-Habitat, WaterAid, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, Stockholm Resilience Center, London School of Economics, and the International Water Association. It also includes a private sector perspective from H&M outlining efforts to increase sustainability in the textile industry.

A Prerequisite

World Water Week this year will focus on taking stock of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as they conclude and the role of water in the MDG’s successors, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to be adopted by the UN General Assembly in September. Implementation of the post-2015 development agenda and anticipated new climate change agreement must be carried out in a coherent manner and water may just provide a bridge for that coherence.

The effects of climate change will manifest themselves through water, and indeed already are. Too much water in one place, too little in another. Water now when you don’t need it; none later when you do. As a prerequisite for sustainable development, water has the potential to serve as a connector between not only different policy areas and economic sectors, but also between nations.

Water is crucial for human sustenance, health, and dignity; it’s a driver for business, for food and energy security, and for the ecosystems upon which our societies and continued development depend. It’s key for health, education, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and conflict prevention and human security. The vast majority of human and economic losses from natural disasters are water related, and the impacts of climate change hit us first and foremost through the land and water system. The drought in California is but one example of the “new normal.”

In short, there’s a case to be made for the importance of water to many of the 169 SDG targets. Hence, the processes and issues being addressed at various global events, such as the forthcoming COP-21 in Paris, are critically important from a water perspective and vice versa.

Resilience and the Importance of WASH

Water for Development calls for improved and more inclusive planning around water at all levels of society. The authors conclude that for societies to improve resilience to cope with disasters we need to plan and build with instead of against natural processes. For example, coastal cities would do well to not put housing in areas where stronger storms and sea-level rise could inundate people. Many cities are already doing such anticipatory planning, but not enough.

The report also calls for more open dialogue about water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). There is little consensus on how to measure success in this space. Perhaps more importantly, many WASH issues remain taboo. We need to figure out how to discuss “pee and poo,” both from a resource perspective and a hygiene perspective. Likewise with menstrual hygiene and the imperative of having access to clean water and sufficient sanitation for girls in school. In too many schools in the developing world, girls have to share sanitary facilities, often with hundreds of other girls, which leads to high drop-out rates as they reach puberty as well as health problems.

A Smart Investment

We have, in many respects, failed to acknowledge how important water management is as a catalyst for growth, the report says. For example, if the irrigated area of the Zambezi basin, which stretches across six countries in southern Africa, was increased threefold, agricultural productivity could increase fivefold. And the dollar value of these benefits is twice the cost of irrigation.

Failures in public policy, including around pricing and regulating water, are identified as key stumbling blocks. Another common management failure is not making use of available rainfall for increased food security and poverty reduction. There are, in many regions, considerable amounts of water available in the form of soil moisture that remains under-utilized. To feed a growing population, more focus on rainfall capture for agricultural production is needed and the potential for improvements to all aspects of development is there.

Again following the mantra of working with natural systems rather than against them, the authors suggest preserving core ecosystem functions. It works both ways: water is imperative to ecosystems because it allow plants to grow and provides animal habitats, and in return, the ecosystems, particularly wetlands, serve as purifiers. We, whether we realize it or not, rely on ecosystems functioning properly. They need to be incorporated into planning processes more thoroughly, and we also need to have a clear understanding that in some places there are indeed maximum thresholds of human use.

As a primer for World Water Week and precursor to the big fall summits on the SDGs and climate change, the global development community would do well to take the perspectives outlined in the report seriously.