From Commitments to Collective Action: The Netherlands at World Water Week 2026
Date
08 Sep' 2026Share
Index
From 23 to 27 August 2026, Stockholm once again gathered the world’s water community for World Water Week to take stock and look ahead. This year’s theme, Water for People and Progress, focused on building a more just and water-secure future for people and the planet amid a rapidly changing climate. For the Government of the Netherlands, strategic partner of World Water Week, it was a moment to exchange expertise, forge partnerships and help translate global ambition into action.
The Netherlands at World Water Week
Across the week, three themes ran through the Dutch programme: water security in food systems, the shift from individual water stewardship to collective action, and sustaining momentum on the multilateral water agenda. Each came to life in different parts of the programme: Water for Tomorrow, the Water in Business series, and a broader set of sessions on climate resilience, integrated water resources management and evidence-based decision-making.
The focus all week lay on building on what’s already there, rather than starting from scratch. New initiatives still have their place, as Water for Tomorrow made clear, but the emphasis was on scaling and consolidating proven approaches. As Eva Schreuder, Head of Water at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, put it: “Let’s make things bigger, better, and do them together with more partners.”
World Water Week is a great opportunity to hear how Dutch-supported programmes contribute to water security on the ground, and to agree with other countries and partners on next steps.
Water as the foundation of sustainable food systems
At the Netherlands Booth, Dutch Water Envoy Meike van Ginneken held up a punnet of blueberries. Roughly 100 litres of invisible water are embedded in them, from cultivation in Peru to a Dutch breakfast table. It set the tone for the Water for Tomorrow session. This new Dutch initiative addresses the water footprint of the fruit and vegetables the Netherlands imports.
Rather than pushing individual farms or companies to become more water-efficient, the programme aims to work at a landscape level. It seeks to bring producers, traders, local authorities and communities together to manage a shared water resource within its sustainable limits, protecting not just food production but also the livelihoods and economic resilience that depend on it.
This government-to-government programme is currently under development and is a joint initiative of the Dutch ministries of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature; Infrastructure and Water Management; and Foreign Affairs. The first phase may run to 2035, with a longer-term horizon extending to 2040. That long timeline draws on decades of delta cooperation, where change has always taken longer than a typical funding cycle. The programme aims to focus on six to eight regions from which the Netherlands imports significant volumes, and therefore contributes to the water footprint it hopes to reduce.
During the session in Stockholm, participants role-played different stakeholders in fictional sourcing regions, wrestling with trade-offs between growers, buyers, communities, smallholders, nature, investors and governments, before a panel discussed how to turn those tensions into action. ‘It’s really about long-term relationship building – how can we jointly solve this and embark on a journey together,’ said panellist Klaudia Schachtschneider from CEO Water Mandate. Maarten Gischler, Water Advisor at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, sees the fruit and vegetable sector as a testing ground for other sectors too. Because it often experiences water stress first, he describes it as “a canary in a coal mine”.
Watch Hajar Yagkoubi’s video report on Water for Tomorrow, recorded during World Water Week 2026, or read more about the initiative in the Water for Tomorrow long read.
Water in Business
Every year, Stockhom World Water Week’s (SWWW) Water in Business programme – organised by the Government of the Netherlands together with the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) – continues where the previous edition left off. This year, the discussions shifted from why businesses should care about water risk to how they should respond to it. “It’s about bringing water into the core of business thinking,” says Iris Panorel, SIWI’s consultant for the programme, “not just as a sustainability issue, but as a key part of business resilience.”
One challenge came up repeatedly during the sessions: companies try to solve water risk with company-level tools, while the problem sits at system level. A company can improve its own efficiency while the wider catchment continues to deteriorate. Businesses also navigate a patchwork of standards, with no shared way of measuring and comparing water impacts across a value chain. The consistent answer was to build partnerships, connect corporate action to the wider system, and push harder for blended and impact investment.
What stood out was a shift in tone around regulation: less than a decade ago, few businesses would openly ask governments to regulate water; now, most did. “The next phase is about moving from commitments to collective action, because shared water risks demand shared responsibility, starting by identifying who else depends on the same water,” says Ylva Veldhuis of Partners for Water.
Watch Hajar Yagkoubi’s video report on Water in Business, recorded during World Water Week 2026.
Anchoring water action in multilateral momentum
Momentum on water has held since the 2023 UN Water Conference. Keeping that momentum going was a recurring theme during SWWW 2026. Discussions increasingly centred on how to turn commitments into action ahead of this year’s UN Water Conference, to be held 8–10 December in Abu Dhabi.
One initiative stood out this week: Water Forward. This World Bank-led coalition launched in April 2026 and aims to improve water security for a billion people by 2030. The Netherlands champions it as a pragmatic route to cooperation across geopolitical divides. “We are very happy that water is on the agenda of the multilateral development banks through the new Water Forward coalition,” says Dutch Water Envoy Meike van Ginneken, “and we are also working with other governments to anchor water within the United Nations in the coming years.”
The input gathered this week will feed into preparations for the 2026 UN Water Conference. But what comes after December matters just as much. The Netherlands wants water to be more firmly embedded within existing multilateral processes. At the same time, as Van Ginneken put it, work is needed at every level: “Action, action, action! It is good to come together at these conferences, but the real action happens at the farm, village, city and basin scale.”
Think not only of today. Think of 2050.
Looking ahead
Across the week, discussions on food systems, business and multilateral diplomacy converged on a shared conclusion: water security is not something any single actor, whether a farm, a company, or a country can deliver alone. From Water for Tomorrow’s 2035 horizon to preparations for the 2026 UN Water Conference, the message is consistent: build on what already works, bring the right actors together and commit for the long haul.
Together, we can build a water-secure and sustainable future for all.
Partners for Water is a Dutch government programme enhancing water security internationally in long-term cooperation with local partners and the Dutch water sector. By facilitating strategic planning and support in the early stages of innovation, the programme aims to contribute to systemic change for sustainable water management and infrastructure. This is how we initiate impactful changes for a better living environment.
