Rome Water Dialogue - Technical Session on Strengthening governance of water tenure through innovation and inclusive dialogue

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I'd like to ask you to find a place and sit down, because we would like to start. We have a very packed program. The whole week is very packed with back-to-back sessions, so it would be nice if we could start more or less in time. I know it's the first session of this week, but yeah, we would like to start. Now, I'd like to... Okay, thank you. Good morning and welcome to this very first session of the Rome Water Dialogue 2026, which is called Strengthening Governance of Water Tenure through Innovation and Inclusive Dialogue. My name is Jeppe Hoogeveen, and I am a senior land and water officer of the Land and Water Division here at FAO headquarters. And I will be the moderator of this session. I've been closely involved with water tenure since it started. We have been working on it here at FAO. And I'm very happy that now we have reached this point where water tenure is the main topic of this year's Rome Water Dialogue. And it includes also a high-level session with a global dialogue on water tenure. This event is being recorded and live-streamed through Zoom, FAO Webcast, and UN Web TV. So I'm pleased to welcome participants from all over the world who will be attending online. This technical session will focus on water tenure as an important perspective to national water governance, which addresses water insecurity at the local level. And I think it's important to stress the local level because we are talking about local water users, and we do not include transboundary water issues. The session will showcase FAO's work on water tenure. and explore how water tenure arrangements can help identify inequalities and governance gap in access and use of water resources. We will also present the progress towards the principles for the responsible governance of water tenure and bring together different stakeholder perspectives on how improved water tenure governance can contribute to food security climate resilience, and more equitable access to water. To start with, it's my pleasure to invite my director, Mr. Li Feng Li, to come to the stage and to open this session. Li Feng.

Thank you, Yippee. Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to welcome you to the fifth Rome Water Dialogue and to this technical session focusing on water tenure governance. For those who were here last week, You already have experienced the Mediterranean water, the showers, thunderstorms. They create a little bit of inconvenience for the FAO from the food to seeds expression there, here in the Chico Maximo. But that's exactly the timely reminder. From seeds to food, we need water. Many people already experienced the effects, the impact by El Nino this year, with too much water in some places or too less water in other places. We live at the water edge. For millennium, civilizations have flourished where they can manage the water well, or civilizations have declined. where water has become a challenge or inaccessible. So the challenges are urgent. Today, water scarcity, droughts, floods, pollution, climate change, and degraded land put increasing pressures on already limited natural resources, directly impacting agriculture production and food security. By 2050, agriculture will need to serve a global population of nearly 9.7 billion people. To feed this population, water demand will rise substantially, above 25% according to our estimation in the State of the World's Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture Report 2025, we also call the Solo Report. The relationship between water and agriculture systems flows both ways. Being the largest sectoral water user, accounting for over 70% of human freshwater withdrawals, agriculture systems, agri-food systems are highly vulnerable to all water challenges. On the other side, agri-food systems hold the solutions to water challenges. Water security won't be achieved until we integrated the management of the 70% of human water use by agriculture into integrated water resource management. This is why water lies at the heart of FAO's mandate. This is why it was chosen as the theme of the 43rd FAO Conference, as well as the theme for the biennium 2024 and 2025. This is why the FAO Council adopted FAO Conceptual Framework for Integrated Land and Water Resources Management. Today, water is well integrated across FAO's normative and technical works. To address the water challenges, we must improve water management and governance, particularly in agriculture. So often, so true and in so many places, water crisis is a crisis of governance. Effective water management requires clear decisions about who can access water, how much they can use, for what purpose, and under which conditions. Water tenure assessment combined with sound water accounting provide valuable tools in answering these questions. Clarity on these questions will enable farmers, communities, public and private sectors to invest more in water. Clarity on these questions reduces conflicts, strengthens trust and creates the foundation for effective incentives and water pricing policies. This is why FAO launched the Global Dialogue on Water Tenure in 2023 UN Water Conference in New York. followed by national and regional dialogues in countries like Colombia and Thailand, and for the regional dialogues in Panama and Bangkok, with active participation of all stakeholders coming from 90 countries. Today, we will present the result of this dialogue, the draft principles of responsible governance of water tenure. Building on the experience of the voluntary guidelines on the responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries, and the forest. We use the acronym VGGT. Our hope is that these voluntary, practical, and adaptable principles will be eventually adopted and will be turned into improved water governance on the ground. Dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, water tenure governance is not an abstract concept. It determines whether farmers can irrigate their crops, whether rivers retain the flows needed to sustain ecosystems, and whether downstream communities can secure their livelihood. Together with the principles of responsible governance of water tenure, we can strengthen water governance and achieve more efficient, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable water use for the better production, better nutrition, a better environment, better life, leaving no one behind. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Li Feng, for setting the scene and showing the importance of of water within FAO in general and of water tenure in particular. So now I would like to invite Mr. Benjamin Kirsch to the stage. Benjamin is a senior water resources specialist at FAO's Land and Water Division, and he is the global coordinator of our water tenure projects. Over the past seven years, Benjamin has been coordinating two projects funded by by the government of Germany in support of FAO's work on water tenure. Benjamin will tell us more about this project in his keynote presentation, which is called Water Tenure Assessment and Water Accounting, Innovative Tools to Support Water Governance. Benjamin, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Jippe. Welcome to Rome. Good to see all of you. As Jippe said, I would like to introduce today two complementary tools that FAO has been developing and applying in support of responsible water governance, water accounting and, very importantly, water tenure assessment. These tools are complementary, and they contribute essentially to improve water and food security, particularly in times of growing water scarcity and for people who are sometimes invisible in water balances, who are vulnerable, who are not protected, small farmers, fisherfolk, pastoralists, at the heart of FAO's mandate. These tools help us to understand water resources from different perspectives. They provide a complete picture of water availability, water use, access, and allocation, and ultimately help us to make better informed and more equitable decisions. I will show you today how we have applied them in practice in these projects and the results and differences they have produced in different countries worldwide. This work has been generously supported by the government of Germany through the KnowWhat and ScaleWhat project, with additional funding by Australia, the Netherlands, and Spain. Now, let's think a bit to start, what do we need to do to govern water responsibly? We need to answer several fundamental questions. How much water is available above and below ground? How do water availability and use change over time? How is the water used, and how much, and for which purposes? How much water and of which quality do natural ecosystems need? But we also need to ask about the users. How many water users are there? How secure is their access to water? Which rules govern water use, access, and allocation? And finally, how are these rules implemented? Not finally, because finally, how fairly is the water shared between all the users? This is where water accounting and water tenure assessment complement each other. Water accounting provides information on the physical dimension, water availability, consumption, demand, variability, and environmental requirements. Water tenure assessment focuses on the governance dimension, Who accesses and who uses water, under which arrangements, how the rules are implemented, and with what degree of security. Knowing how much water is available is essential for water management, but it is not sufficient if we do not understand who can actually access, under which rules, and how allocation decisions are made. Let's first go to water accounting. And I want to take you to Colombia, to the north of Colombia, to the Magdalena Basin, the Rio Frio and Rio Sevilla watersheds, where we have supported water accounting. And in this basin, we can see the importance of understanding the relationship between water availability, particularly agricultural demand, and competing water users. This slide illustrates the importance of establishing an accurate water balance. Water availability is not constant through the year. It varies with rainfall, as we can see, dry season, wet season, river flows and hydrological conditions. At the same time, demand, particularly in agriculture, is high during periods where water availability is low. By comparing available resources, the blue line, and estimated demand, the green columns, the existing concessions on water, the red dotted line, and environmental reflow requirements, the blue columns, what accounting can help identify potential imbalances between water availability and demand. And we can see here in the dry season, the water use exceeds the available water. And we can also see imbalances between water allocation and actual water use. If you look at the red dotted line in the dry season, it's over-allocated, the basin. Now, we have several key challenges here. One is the adequate quantification of environmental flows, and FAO has developed a methodology to assess these environmental flows at basin level, and another key challenge You don't see groundwater here. And this is a problem, because in many places, we do not have adequate information on groundwater. An incomplete water balance can undermine the security of water access, particularly for small farmers, rural communities, and remote populations, even when formal water rights exist. To get the water balance right, we need to look in particularly at the water demand of the agricultural sector. And here you see, again, the case of the Rio Frio and Sevilla. And you see the water demand by agriculture, the blue lines, and the total water demand, the orange lines. They're almost the same. 95% of water demand in this basin comes from agriculture. And this is a situation that we have in many places of this Earth. Now, it's very difficult to assess how much water Uh, agriculture needs, and WAPOR, the, uh, um, FAO's innovative, uh, platform developed with support from the Netherlands, uses satellite-based information to assess agricultural water demand and water productivity. The data is freely available. WEBA provides near-time real information on actual water consumption of crops. It complements information that we have on concessions, on field measurements, and improves the reliability of water accounting. However, even with improved water resources data, we still need to understand the governance arrangements behind water users and understand how secure the access to water is. And this is where water tenure comes into the picture. What is it and what is it not? Water tenure assessments refers to the arrangements that determine who can use water, which resources, for how long, under which conditions, and with what degree of security. Water tenure focuses on arrangements governing access, management, and use. It can be formal arrangements. put down, for example, in water laws or informal and customary arrangements, which may be unwritten, passed on for generations. Water tenure focuses on water access and allocation at the local and national level. As Yip has said, this is not about transboundary allocation between countries. It is also important to clarify that water tenure is not about ownership of water, but rights to access, use, and manage the resource, as well as duties to protect it and to use it responsibly. A water tenure assessment helps us understand how these arrangements operate in practice. This is a very innovative methodology which we developed in the framework of the German-funded KNOWAT project starting from 2019. This methodology examines formal legislation and institutions, but also customary and informal arrangements that may not be fully recognized by laws. It analyzes the relative security of the different water tenure arrangements, the implementation of existing rules and relationships, as well as competition and potential conflicts between users. The objective of such a water tenure assessment is to build a clear picture of who uses water, under which arrangements, and how secure those arrangements are. This methodology combines legal, institutional, and socioeconomic analysis with field research and stakeholder engagement. I would like to go into details. I only have 10 minutes. I can't, but have a look. It's available online. And we also have some copies here for you to look at. It works around across different levels connecting national frameworks with basin level realities and local practices. It is a multidisciplinary and multilevel approach. And this is essential. By combining national with local perspectives, sociological knowledge with legal knowledge, and water resources specialist knowledge, We can identify gaps between formal rules and their implementation on the ground, as well as customary, indigenous, community-based, as well as spiritual practices. In many places, this religious water tenure exists. Now, a water tenure assessment is not a purely analytical exercise. The findings are validated with national and local stakeholders and translated into practical recommendations. These may concern legal and institutional reform, better recognition of existing tenure arrangements, improved registration procedures, or mechanisms to prevent conflicts and to resolve them. The aim is to identify concrete pathways to strengthen water tenure security for different users, as well as water demands by natural ecosystems. FAO has applied and adopted this methodology across different regions. We've worked in Colombia, Thailand, Senegal, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The experiences cover very different governance systems, water use practices, and institutional context. They also demonstrate that this methodology is really flexible and can be applied to different national contexts. But since we use the same methodology, we can maintain a common analytical framework that allows us to draw lessons across countries and across settings. It's very valuable. And I'm very happy that today we have experts who have applied this methodology in three continents with us, and they will share their experiences later on in the program. Now, you will ask yourself, what have we learned from this? Let me tell you some lessons. Several common findings are emerging. First, customary and informal tenure arrangements are often insufficiently recognized in formal legislation, even when they play an important role in water access and management at local level. Second, Complex and inaccessible permit and registration procedures can weaken tenure security, particularly for small water users, small farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk. They often don't even have licenses. They just use the water, but they don't have a formal right for this. Third. Environmental and non-consumptive water uses, including fisheries, are not always adequately integrated into planning and allocation. You remember the water balance I showed. Finally, legal recognition does not automatically translate into security in practice. And one very important thing, and it's very good and positive to see this, that the assessment process itself can strengthen capacities empower local water users, and create opportunities for dialogue to improve water governance. These findings are part of the evidence base for the draft principles of responsible governance of water tenure, which we'll hear about later in the program and at the high-level session on Wednesday. Before I close, I just want to share with you very, very briefly some concrete outcomes of these water tenure assessments on the ground. where we've worked. In Rwanda, the work has contributed to improved identification of water users and users and better access to registration for small water users. They have now a better picture of who is using water. In Colombia, the assessment has flagged recognition of community-based drinking water supply systems to improve the water security of rural populations. In Sri Lanka, The focus has motivated the irrigation department to advance legal recognition of traditional water users. And in Senegal, the process has contributed to improve coordination between government and local authorities, alongside greater recognition of customary users in national water policy. These examples illustrate how evidence from water tenure assessments can support concrete institutional and policy responses in support to better access and more fair allocation of water resources. To recap, the central message is that better water data and better understanding of water governance need to advance together. Water accounting helps us understand how much water is available, allocated, and consumed. Water tenure assessment helps us understand who accesses the water, under what arrangements, and with what degree of security. Together, and only together, they provide the evidence needed to support more transparent, equitable, and sustainable allocation decisions. Ultimately, this is about strengthening water security and food security, particularly of vulnerable populations, as well as natural ecosystems. And these ecosystems provide the basis of the agricultural production of which we all depend. I invite you to explore FAO's water tenure resources, methodological guidance, and country experiences, all available on our website. Please watch our water tenure video. It's available in seven languages. And take the brand new e-learning course, The Fundamentals of Water Tenure. which just started live last week. All the resources are available on our website. Please engage with us as our work continues. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Benjamin. So it's clear now that it's not only the water balance that we look into, while it's important that you can to measure how much water is there because you cannot manage what you can't measure, but it's also very important to understand which rules and conditions are applied for water sharing and access to water. So now, before further proceeding with other presentations, I would like to invite you to watch a brief video on the principles of responsible governance and water tenure, which is produced by our colleagues of FAO in Colombia. Please.

Today, from the FAO-SkelWat project, we want to tell you how we can use and care for water responsibly. This initiative supports different countries through principles agreed upon by experts in agriculture, the environment, and sustainable development. Here, we will explore some key ideas to understand how decisions about water are made, who participates, how water is used, and how it is protected. All of this is part of what is known as the governance of water tenure. To ensure that there is enough water for everyone and that it is used responsibly, it is essential to follow certain basic principles. These principles aim to ensure that all people can access water fairly and that ecosystems remain healthy. regardless of the country where they live. Protect the human right to water and food. Everyone should be able to access water safely without putting their health or food security at risk. Recognize traditional and community uses of water, because many different communities have cared for it for generations. Protect ecosystems. Because without healthy rivers and clean water sources, there is no water for anyone. Ensure all voices are heard, including women, youth, indigenous people, and local and rural communities who have a lot to say about water because they experience it every day. Gender equality and equity. Ensure that women are an equal part of the decisions made to use and protect water. Make decisions based on information and transparency. Know how much water there is, who uses it, for what purpose, and how it can be better protected. All of these principles are part of what FAO, other experts and many organizations call responsible governance of water tenure. It may sound complex, but it is simply the way we organize our rights and responsibilities in an inclusive, equitable and sustainable manner. As you can see, talking about water is much more than just turning on a tap. Behind every drop we use, there are agreements, decisions, possible tensions, and also a great of shared responsibility.

Okay, and now I would like to invite Sofia Espinoza, land and water specialist here at FAO and scale what project coordinator in Thailand. and Jessica Trow, Director of the International Water Program at Environmental Law Institute, to the stage. Sophia and Jessica will present the draft principles on the responsible governance of water tenure. And FAO worked together with Environmental Law Institute to bringing together the evidence and expertise and stakeholder perspectives related to water tenure. Sofia and Jessica will take us through this process and tell us how the findings from water tenure assessments and regional dialogues resulted eventually in the draft principles of responsible governance of water tenure. Please, Sofia and Jessica, the floor is yours.

Thank you so much, Gipe. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Thank you for all those also connected online and on stream. It is a pleasure to be here with you today and to share some of the emerging results coming from the different dialogues on water tenure that we have had around the globe. Today, we will not only share some numbers, but we also want to share with you what we have learned on the process. who has participated, where we see emerging important issues, where ideas and priorities converge, and where we see also areas for future analysis and collaboration. Ultimately, these results will help us to shape a framework that is sufficiently common to provide guidelines, but also remaining flexible enough to respond to very different water tenure realities. The Global Dialogue, and probably many of you know because you have participated on this, is fundamentally A participatory, evidence-based, and iterative process. Evidence generated through water tenure assessment and accounting exercises, as Ben mentioned, supports the global mandate and provides also the foundation for regional, national, and sectorial consultations. In turn, these dialogues help to draft the principles which then would guide further implementation of global commitments. And this is how we move to elements of responsible governance of water tenure to principles that are globally relevant, locally grounded, and collectively owned. At the center of these dialogues, we have these 12 draft principles that together they recognize that water tenure is not simply about defining our right to use water. It is also whatever those rights are legitimate tenure arrangements are recognized protected and secure, and whether allocation is fair and inclusive, whether institutions are accountable and transparent, whether decisions are based on evidence, and whether governance is sustainable, resilient, and coherent with broader policies. The 12 draft principles provide a common framework allowing discussions among different stakeholders and across sectors that not always speak to each other. So let's start with the results of these consultations. As you can see in this map, the dialogues and consultations achieve great geographical reach, almost 800 participants and 95 countries have contributed. The consultations were taking different forms depending on the context, including regional and national dialogues, as well as targeted consultations with specific stakeholders and groups. What makes this process both innovative and grounded is that it is exactly the diversity of actors that join the dialogue so we can hear all the diverse voices coming from women, stakeholder groups, right holders, but also indigenous peoples and pastoral communities. This diversity is essential because water tenure challenges are highly contextual, and different actors may experience water tenure in different ways. For those wondering which 95 countries contribute, here you can see the countries that have participated to the dialogues. But more importantly, you can see that participation has not been only limited to a single constituency. governments, civil society, right holders, as I mentioned, academia, youth, indigenous peoples, and other stakeholders contributed bringing together experiences and perspective from the ground to now the global dialogue. This diversity is essential and it fostered the participatory and iterative process that I mentioned in the beginning. So now, going beyond the numbers, As you can see, the consultation has allowed us to gather feedback on all 12 principles. However, thanks to a common methodology that we have used around the different consultations, this has allow us to highlight the interconnections and common priorities. While all the principles are considered relevant, different regions and stakeholder groups have placed greater emphasis on issues. Importantly, fair and inclusive allocation has emerged as a common priority across all regions and across all stakeholders. For those interested, we have put together with our local partners an interactive dashboard online that can allow you to see which elements for which constituencies and which regions have been prioritized. And when we disaggregate these findings at the regional and by stakeholder groups, some particularly interest patterns begin to appear. Let me share with you these two. So when we look at government perspectives, we have both convergence and divergence and differences between regions and the dialogues. In Latin America and the Caribbean, sustainability emerged as the main priority. And in the Asia and the Pacific, fair and inclusive allocation takes the lead. For civil society and right holders, these two are also a priority, but they also include right-based approaches, recognition, and protection. These differences are important because they reflect distinct governance realities and bring attention to evidence of indigenous people, for example, and right holders whose priorities may be less visible in aggregated results. Another interesting result is when we look at the academic sector. At regional level, we can see areas of emphasis, seeing that in Latin America and the Caribbean, accountability and transparency and gender features strongly, where in Asia and the Pacific, security of tenure and for inclusive allocation emerged prominently. But also at the global level, this brings the picture broader, including considerations to policy coherence and also their sustainability. This reinforces once again the importance to look into water governance, taking into consideration future generations, but also that governance requires much more than just formal recognition of rights. And this brings us to one of the most important contributions of the consultation, is the cross-cutting teams that we have seen. across different regions and across stakeholder groups. And for this, I will pass the floor to Jess.

Thank you so much, Sophia, and good morning, everyone. So as Sophia said, I will now focus a little bit on some of the more important cross-cutting themes that emerged around the content of the draft principles. And the first overarching theme was really a broad consensus that each of the draft principles is important and that together they address significant gaps in water tenure governance. Participants also stressed and recognized the importance of the interdependencies across the draft principles and emphasized the need for practical guidance on how best to implement them. In particular, we heard a lot of feedback around how to more clearly define key concepts within different contexts, but also with sort of a universal tenor, such as legitimacy, sustainability, and tenure security. and to develop criteria that can help countries balance those considerations and manage trade-offs that may arise when they're applying the principles. A related second theme concerns prioritization in allocation. As situations of scarcity and competing water demands become increasingly common globally, difficult decisions have to be made about how water is allocated or even reallocated across sectors and users. While most countries have some form of prioritization mechanism, the ways in which they weight those priorities and the level of detail for their application is quite varied and often reflect countries' attempts to balance very contextual considerations of social equity, resource sustainability, and economic development. So the discussions around prioritization raised Again, really important issues around how global principles for responsible governance of water tenure can provide common guidance on which users and sectors to prioritize, while also allowing prioritization mechanisms to reflect national and local circumstances. More broadly, participants stressed that the criteria and the processes that are used to establish and implement allocation have to be transparent, evidence-based, and implementable. The third theme highlights the importance of focusing on vulnerable and marginalized users and their water tenure arrangements. Across all regions and countries, participants emphasized both the diversity and the critical importance of effectively recognizing and protecting indigenous, customary, and other community-based water tenure arrangements. They also noted that, as Ben said before, even where these tenure systems may be legally recognized, they often remain comparatively less secure. Across many contexts, one reason for this insecurity is the misalignment between the permitting systems that most countries use and rely on for allocation and the priorities, needs, and capacities of vulnerable users. While the formal recognition that these systems provide theoretically improves tenure security, in reality, these systems often exclude vulnerable and marginalized users by imposing onerous financial and other burdens where governments may lack the capacity to support their implementation. Participants across all regions and stakeholder groups also highlighted persistent gaps in the availability, accuracy, and sharing of data and information. And this includes, as Ben noted, information on water quantity and quality, and particularly missing information on groundwater, but also information on users, uses, and water demands. water tenure arrangements are not effectively recognized, they remain essentially invisible during resource planning and allocation decision making. It also means that important traditional and local knowledge systems are often overlooked in decision making. So as Ben noted, it will be critical to use tools like water tenure assessment and water accounting to connect the information about how much water is available and how much is allocated and consumed with information about who uses it, under which tenure arrangements, and with what degree of security. Another recurring issue is the persistent gap between what's required in laws and what's actually happening on the ground. And again, water tenure assessment really brings this out very clearly. Across countries, participants consistently highlighted the challenges presented by fragmented legal and policy frameworks, overlapping institutional mandates, and the inconsistencies or even conflicts across water, land, and other natural resource laws and policies that together make up the complex framework governing water tenure. These gaps often create uncertainty, duplication of efforts, and conflicting allocation priorities. So the overall message from across all of the consultations is that effective and equitable water tenure governance requires stronger policy, legal, and institutional coherence, as well as more integrated approaches to tenure governance more broadly. Many discussions, unsurprisingly, focused on the need to more effectively integrate ecosystem health and environmental water requirements into allocation systems in order to balance human and ecosystem needs and provide for long-term tenure security. At the same time, participants across all consultations also stressed that climate variability and changing hydrological conditions require increased flexibility to be able to manage allocation effectively under changing circumstances. And this presents a really daunting governance challenge. You have to be able to provide that flexibility and adaptive capacity while also maintaining sufficient tenure security, particularly for the most vulnerable. In this context, participants again highlighted the real need for implementation guidance, drawing on evidence from diverse contexts to support the development of tools for navigating this balance. And finally, the consultations consistently emphasized that improved participation and accountability measures are essential for effective planning, fair allocation, improved transparency, and gender equality. Participants noted that existing provisions for participation remain weak and unenforceable, are insufficiently resourced, and often are limited to consultation without significant influence on decisions. Ultimately, there's broad consensus that sustainability, resilience, and tenure security have to be addressed as an integrated whole by water tenure governance systems that are more inclusive, adaptive, and accountable. So what does this mean for the next phase of the Global Dialogue? The consultations have generated broad support for the draft principles, but they also identified several areas that require further clarification and a lot of consensus building. For example, as I mentioned before, there's a need to build consensus around key concepts, the definitions of key concepts, such as what are legitimate tenure arrangements, what does resilience mean, what does sustainability mean, what does equity mean. and these are often interpreted differently across different governance contexts. There's a need for both general guidance as well as tailored guidance for unique contexts of groups such as pastoralists, fisher folks, small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, and the women and girls within those communities. And clear and accessible indicators will also be needed to monitor implementation progress. Finally, several issues were raised that will require further recognition and elaboration in the principles. One example that was repeatedly emphasized by participants was the need to refer more often and to integrate more often the issue of water quality in relation to water tenure. So I just wanted to share with you some of the data that we've been gathering on these to sort of understand what people are saying, what it relates to. And this slide demonstrates one way in which we track the frequency and context for the feedback. Here you can see that the issue of water quality was raised 48 separate times in relation to 11 out of the 12 draft principles. And so we're taking data like this to apply to inform further iterations of the draft principles and development of this guidance for implementation. So moving forward, there is significant room for continued dialogue among governments, rights holders, civil society, academia, and other stakeholders. So calling you to please stay involved, contribute your valuable expertise and feedback. As Ben noted, we just launched an online water tenure course on the FAO e-learning academy website and invite you to take a look or even take the course. We also strongly encourage you to consider joining the water your experts group to contribute your perspectives and expertise and stay involved in this evolving and exciting process to develop principles for the responsible governance of water tenure. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Sophia and Jessica. So what clearly emerges from this presentation is that the principles should not be developed behind a desk or in the research community, but they should be grounded in experiences and perspectives from different stakeholders. And this brings us directly to the next discussion. What does responsible governance of water tenure mean for the people and communities who depend on water for their livelihoods? So now we will move to a panel discussion. To moderate this panel, I'm pleased to invite Maria Alejandra Schaux over here. Welcome, Maria Alejandra, who is a senior natural resources specialist at FIO Colombia, and she has been very much involved with our work in the Scaleboard project in Colombia. Alejandra, for your...

Thank you, Lill, for inviting me. Thanks a lot. Well, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. It's a pleasure to stay here this morning and to moderate this stage. To start, I would this panel, I'm pleasure to invite the panelists to join me on the stage. Please, Mr. Laman in the first, Daniel Mawenda, please come here. He is the president of the World Farmers Organization. Daniel, come. And the second panelist is Mr. Laman Samak. He is the land and water tenure expert from FAO Senegal. Come here. Thank you. The third panelist is Mrs. Betsokar Bahal. She is the Governance and Inclusive Conservation Coordinator of the Water Governance Program on WWF Colombia. Thanks. You run a lot to stay here. Thank you, Betua. And the fourth is Mr. Mova Afghani, Director of the Center for Regulation, Policy, and Governance from Indonesia. Mova, thank you. And the last panelist is Mrs. Tanya Sharma, the land data specialist of FAO, her career's Rome. Thanks a lot for stay here this morning, and I hope you enjoy a lot this panel. Well, Ben give us some assessment to actions in four countries. And now we want to hear directly from our stakeholders working across different contexts and regions. This is, we have this very specific panelists. And we're drawing the experience of the farmers, pastoralizers, local communities, John Water professionals, and policy experts. And, well, to begin, the panelists will also share practice lessons with us from the Water Turner assessment. And we'll start the discussion with Daniel Mawanda. And Daniel, give her about your perspective, which governors Which government reforms is necessary to ensure farmers secure and just access to water for production and livelihoods, considering the increased pressure on water resource, please?

Thank you, Maria. Good morning, everyone. So as far as water is concerned, The position is, or what we should realize is, we cannot separate water from food, because water is a basic resource for the production of food. So as we talk about sustainability of agri-food systems, we should also connect this with sustainability of the water resources that the world has. So we cannot disconnect those two. As far as what is required, what policy reforms or what regulations, what laws are required, I think first is realizing that water, just like food, is a basic human right, that particularly the producers, the farmers, and this I'm speaking from the perspective of the World Farmers Organization, but also from the local level, when you think about the national farm organization that constitutes the World Farmers Organization. So it is whatever regulations, laws, strategies, programs that governments put up, partners like the FAO put up, is to remember that you cannot dissociate food and water. Number two is to recognize, of course, water as a basic human right. and to build governance structures to put up investments that recognize water as a basic human right. The other thing is to appreciate the tacit knowledge that people at the grassroots have, and this is farmers, obviously, recognize the knowledge they have, what they know about managing water, because this is something we've done over millennia. and appreciating what they bring to the table so that it is not always, you know, imposing from the top and saying, this is what should happen. While that, of course, has a role, we should appreciate the knowledge farmers bring, the practices that they have, because they have managed water for millennia. Then the other thing is, of course, to remember that water also constitutes plays an important role in soil health, because if we do not have, if we have runoff, for instance, or if we have soils that are not healthy, obviously we are going to end up with water that is not healthy. So connecting those three issues would help us guide the laws, regulations, and practices that governments and other partners need to put in place to ensure that water remains a basic human right and that farmers are recognized for the important role they play in preserving this important resource.

You take the time, it's just, thank you so much, Daniel. Okay, Lambine, tell us, you lead the water tenure assessment in Senegal and organize a regional consultant on the governance of water tenure, focusing on the right of pastoralists in the West Africa. What were the three most important calls to actions from this consultation to improve access to water for pastoralists and their communities, please?

Thank you so much. Thank you for the question. It was my pleasure to coordinate the water dialogue in Senegal at the national level, also the regional consultation on water tenure, focus on pastoralism. The water tenure assessment in Senegal and regional consultation, I'd like the central issue, access to water, depend not only on infrastructure, but also on those rights are recognized, how decisions are made, and whatever pastoralism can reach and use water when they need it. It's very important to highlight free action. The first is recognize and secure pastoralism legitimate water right, including customary and collective right. It's important because pastoralism, they are sometimes excluded on the process, and they think it's important to take into account their priority, their right, and their responsibility on the issue of water tenure. The second, give pastoralists and the community's effective voice in water governance. It's important also because pastoralists should participate in decision about the location of water infrastructure, allocation right, the access to feeds, and maintenance and conflict resolution. They can also participate like women, youth, people, and mobile users, those perspectives can be overlooked in local management arrangement. The third one is to connect investment in water infrastructure with tenure security, pastoralism, mobility, and regional cooperation. It's important because we need to invest in water. To inform that process by assessment of right seasonal movement, resolution, resource availability, and potential tension between user pastoral monitoring data can help to identify where support is most needed. It's important to process like that. And I think those three call action. are closely connected. Secure legitimate rights, ensure meaningful participation, and make investment work for pastoralism system. It's important to put those three actions together to improve the process and to include pastoralism. in the process of water chain. Sometimes the policy focus on agriculture, food production, crops, they forget sometimes to take into account pastoralism. They need also water, and it's important also to take into account their need and to avoid conflict between users. Thank you.

Thank you, Namin. Well, we move to Colombia. And go with Betsua. Betsua, WWF is supporting the water sector workshop platform of public and private partnership. I mean, at improving the water governance in the Rio Frío and Sevilla, a few minutes ago from Ben. water sheets in North Colombia. How was the platform addressed the challenge of farmers to access water in adequate quantity and quality, and which were the recommendation for responsible governance of water as discussed during the National Dialogue last year, please?

Thank you, Maria Alejandra, for the question, and good morning, everyone. To briefly set the context, the Water Stewardship Platform is a voluntary, public, private, community initiative that has brought together different stakeholders, institutions, companies, civil society, and communities. for working together for more than a decade. And it promotes collective action around water, but it's looking especially at water security in the watersheds connecting the Sierra Nevada Santa Marta, which is the upper part of the watershed, and the Cienaga Grande Santa Marta, which is the lowest part. And I'd like to bring a field work conducted as a part of the water tenure assessment that you were, we were, they were presented earlier. As a part of that, they identify unreliable water ability, particularly in the lower basin, and also water quality problems, pollution, and informal arrangement used by some communities to access water. These challenges are intensified, for sure, with climate change. And unfortunately, the platform has not solved all these challenges, but as you mentioned in your question, it has helped to address them. And I would like to highlight 3 points. The first is by strengthening information. and monitoring for decision making. And all these years, the platform has generated and shared information, supported participatory monitoring of water, but also biodiversity, and promoted collective analysis of water risk, for example. And projects like ScaleWAT and FAO are are complemented or have been complemented, this is for by developing or updating hydrological, social, and governance information for the Rio Frio and Sevilla watersheds. The second one is the recognition and strengthening of the existing capacities. The platform has promoted capacity development among these stakeholders, communities, productive sectors, through approaches adapted to the territorial context. This will recognize that communities, small farmers, indigenous peoples, and people of African descent already hold a valuable knowledge about the territory and how the water systems work. And for example, we participate in the training or scale water and power training of the local university, Magdalena University, and water accounting and water power. So I think it's very interesting the way that both knowledge are combined, like the technical knowledge and the local knowledge. And I think this is a very important point to address the challenges that we have. And third one, by creating a sustained or permanent space for collective action. We didn't think that it will be 10 years so far. I was in the first dialogues and we never imagined that after 10 years we will be here sharing this experience. So the platform promotes a structure and horizontal dialogue among these stakeholders and I would like to highlight that rather than to create a parallel platform, FAO decided to strengthen the existing platform, that is the watershed platform. And it has helped to connect the local knowledge and the local dialogues with national dialogues and global dialogues like this. And regarding the second part of the question, I'm good with the time? No? Okay.

Don't worry. Okay. Thank you, Etwa. And, well, we take the time because it's important to continue all panelists and the show. Thank you. And now turn to Muba. He is a member of the Water Tenure Expert Group. You have experience conducting water tenure assessment. answer is, how can a water tenure assessment strengthen water governance laws? Could you share a concrete finding from the assessment in Indonesia and explain how it may shape future policy reform to address inequity and insecurity in access to water, please?

Thank you. The main contribution is in the analytical framework. And in practical terms, I think the water tenure assessments allow us to see users that are usually unseen. So it's not an inclusion. I'll give you 3 examples. The first one is in Borneo, in Kalimantan, which having a lot of problems with haze right now with the forest fire. There are lots of customary tenures there and very, very much interlinked with the land tenure. There are protected forests. There are customary tenures and property rights. And if only that we can actually put them more visible in the system, I think we can manage the peatland hydrology a lot better. The second one is another case. We have plenty of a custom-built system, which is wells, for example, for community-based water supply, and there is no clear recognition in terms of their use. So if they can be recognized by the government, then they can have more better entitlement and tenure security. The 3rd is we have also what we call multiple use system. There are household wells which are dependent on irrigation canals. When the canals are closed, the wells are drying. And this has tremendous gender implications because the mothers and everything else then will be in trouble. Now, as to your second question, what sort of reform pathway, I think we can give two examples. The first is we are now drafting a water services law, and we want to put more recognition on community-based water supply. So these CBOs, we call impossible tenure because they cannot have a license. We want to streamline and making it easier for them to obtain the license. The second one is we have this, what farmers call the water mafia. So it's sort of like people organizing and directing the flow of water to those who are not entitled to receive them, usually during drought. Now, what we need to do is we need to build more complaint mechanism for the farmers and more accountability as how they turn the gates. So these are the two which are currently, I think, advocating it to be in the pipeline. Thank you.

Thank you, Moa. And finally, I would now like to say to Tania, OK, she is a adult water expert, and she is sure for us the perspective of this. And John, you organized a global consultation with young water experts from around the world on the elements of responsibility, governance of water turner, elements of principles we saw a few minutes ago. What 3 issues stood out in the discussion regarding the role of youth in the decision making on water allocation, please?

Hi, thank you for the question. Actually, I am not a water expert. I work in the land tenure team. And because I was involved with the ALEP, there's an agri-food leadership education program on water action here in FAO, being jointly organized with the Office of Youth and Women and the Land and Water Division. That's how I was able to connect with this process and conduct the consultation. So thank you to all the colleagues there. And so we conducted A consultation in June online where we had 87 participants from 44 countries, mostly from the global South, and over 40% of the participants were women. And we organized the consultation sort of in breakout rooms where people discuss the principles through clusters. and really brought their own personal contextual experiences to the discussion. So whether it was drought, managing droughts in Sahel or indigenous water rights issues in the Philippines, we were able to discuss the principles through that lens. And three things that kept sort of coming up, first was participation but without power. So a lot of participants noted that often young people are invited to consultations But there's focus on awareness building and capacity building, but there isn't institutional mandates to have a concrete role for them to participate in decision making. And until they are present in the decisions being made in committees, in catchment associations, that is not-- it's still an unfulfilled promise of participation. Another issue that came up was actually how land and water rights, of course, are inextricably linked. And young people very often have lesser access to land. They don't own land. And because of that, they do not have water rights that are equally protected. So one, the most legally relevant sort of recommendation that came out of the consultation was that people's right to water should be recognized, and that should be protected legally, even if they do not possess rights to land themselves if they don't have legal title. And third was an issue of lack of transparency that came up, which was that very often in several countries, decisions are made without people knowing that a process is underway. So people find out after they're already being affected by these decisions. We had like someone from the Philippines talk about how free prior informed consent was not really sort of incorporated in the process of decision-making, and so communities find out that their rights have been allocated elsewhere, and they don't have the resources to contest these decisions, even if they know that technically they have the right to. But they didn't just ask for transparency, they also offered solutions. So we had a participant from Iraq talking about how young people there are involved in monitoring water pollution issues and fish deaths, which often... official statistics miss. So they really came offering solutions as well about how recognizing citizen-generated data and having more public clarity on how decisions are made would be really meaningfully help apply these principles, basically. So thank you.

Thank you, Tania. Well, we saw in this round about the importance of the water for food and connection of the agrofood system, the access to the importance of the access, the water recognized in the pastoral eyes, the importance of the multi-actor platform and the interaction without different actors. and the importance of the analysis of data and the perspective of it. And well, we have another question, other round, a little round. We saw the Sophia show us the draft of principles of elements or some priorities in Latin America and Asia. Well, we want to share one, you need to select one of the elements and why you select this element. What is the importance for you, this element, for the governance and the highlight the government and why, please.

Yeah, thank you, Maria. I think I'll pick the... the rights-based approach, because this underpins all that happens in the conservation and management of water. The director, I think, Dr. Lee, did talk about civilizations flourish or fall. Civilizations flourish or fall depending on how they manage water resources. And I think this is a very important thing to consider, particularly now as we continue with this pressure from climate change, which of course puts immense pressure on water resources. We see a lot of issues around governance. We've heard about water mafia, because that's what happens if the governance is not proper or when farmers who manage, more or less, let's say, a land of the landmass in the world, and they manage it to produce the food that keeps us healthy. So this rights-based approach is important because if we regard water as a basic human right, then we are going to build a framework of laws and regulations that look at it that way, that preserves it as a human right, that consults the people who get affected the most, and in this case, I would say, it is the farmers, so that we can preserve, or at least we would have a chance to preserve our civilization. Of course, it is cliched that the future wars will be about water, and I believe so when you look at what is happening around the world, it's actually something that I think could happen in the future. It behooves us all, the leaders who are here today, to mitigate this, so that we don't go to war about water. We can only do this if we invest, we put the right investments, if we put the right infrastructure, because water scarcity is mostly not It's not only about, you know, allocation. It is also about governance. And this is very key. And this may be what the FAO and the governments and other actors who are here today, the farmers through the World Farmers Organization, the different national farmer organizations, governance is key, putting the right investments. to build water as a basic human right and, of course, the infrastructure that is required to underpin all this. So I would take this as one of the principles that I think for me is very key because then it connects all these others. Thank you.

We have only five minutes. One, take all of you, the principle, the name of the principle, and one sentence. Why is important? Please, please, Lamin, do it!

I will do it. Thank you, thank you so much. As you say, we have lots of elements important for us, but I will focus on one. And for me, the element is element four, policy and legal coherence. It's important because pastoralism, for them to access to water, it depends on... several sectors. We have a lot of minister, a lot of stakeholders who are involved in the process. So it's important to have coherence between those users and between policy. Thank you.

One sentence, remember?

Difficult task for a Colombian. I would like to highlight a fair and inclusive water allocation because I think it's very interconnected with other elements, because for inclusive and fair, I'm sorry, a fair and inclusive water allocation, we need, it requires accessible information, stronger capacities to participate in recognition of local and customary arrangements.

Okay, Betsa, good.

Move on.

Okay. I think it's the recognition and protection. Why? Because in Indonesia, we have 1,700 different ethnic groups which speak 700 different languages. So we have a wealth of different customary water tenure. Thank you.

Thank you, Mova.

And Tania.

I will also go for element five, fair and inclusive water allocation. That was what our group picked through the consultation, and it's also the thing that sort of makes sure that we move from principle to practice. So that is, in the end, the goal. So that's my answer.

Okay, thank you, Tania. Well, I hope you enjoyed this panel. Thanks a lot for all panelists. And take in your mind, what is the principle you have in your mind and why. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for this interesting discussion. Apologies that we have to hurry it a little bit, to rush you in your answers. But as I said in the beginning, we have a very packed program during the whole week, actually. So to conclude this session, I am pleased to invite our director again, Lifeng Li. Can you please come up to the stage? And I'd like to invite you to wrap up the session and present some takeaway messages. Thank you very much, Li Feng.

Thank you, Jeppe. Excellence, distinguished delegates, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, as we close this session, Let me begin by thanking all of you for your participation and also for your very rich discussion and constructive dialogue here. As I said at the very beginning, our water crisis is a crisis of governance. Better water management must consider who can access to water, how much they can use, for what purpose, and under which conditions. We must consider how water is allocated fairly and securely to ensure everyone has access to sufficient water of good quality when they need. We must also safeguard water for healthy ecosystems that regulate our water cycles, that support biodiversity, and support agriculture and fishery production. Responsible governance of water tenure reduces conflicts, strengthens trust, and creates the foundation for effective incentives and other policies. The outcome of the dialogue on water tenure represent a crucial step in this journey. FAO and partners worldwide have built evidence and facilitated a global and inclusive consultation process to the draft principles for responsible governance of water tenure. These principles are now available to all FAO members to further refine and hopefully adopt them soon. Through water tenure assessment, water accounting, capacity development, technical assistance, policy advice, et cetera, we at FAO firmly committed to supporting FAO members to turn these principles into management practice towards more responsible and effective water governance. The strong participation today of representatives from governments, civil society, indigenous peoples, farmers, academia, and the youth sends a powerful message. Water governance is not the responsibility of one sector, one institution, or one group of actors alone. It can only be achieved through dialogue, through participation, through collaboration. Today, we can make responsible governance of water tenure that's deployed for water and food security for future. Thank all of the speakers, the panelists, the participants, as well as the colleagues who have contributed to this journey from the assessment to the national, regional, and global dialogues. Thanks to the government of Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia for their generous support to our work in water tenure in the past few years. Also, thank FAO, the COAG, for the mandate and also the guidance provided by the COAG at various sessions. The government of Colombia and Thailand for their national dialogues and also hosting the regional dialogues. I would like to invite all of you to continue the debate at the high-level session of the Rome Water Dialogue on the Global Dialogue of Water Tenure, which will be here on Wednesday morning from 9 o'clock to 12 in the plenary hall, the third floor of this building. And in addition, let me take this opportunity to warmly invite all of you to the other sessions of this year's Rome Water Dialogue. Immediately after this session, we will start in a few minutes, the session focused on restoration of degraded agricultural lands, innovation from a policy to practice for water and food security. Tomorrow, again here in this room from 9 o'clock, we will focusing on innovation, planning, and investment in drought management and irrigation. As mentioned by Tanya, Tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 in the room Philippines, Philippine rooms in the building C, we will have a session with the youth leaders drive water action, the agri-food leadership education program that's focused on water. And we will have the first batch, 20 participants will graduating from this program. Then Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock, we have the youth assembly session that's focused on advancing sustainable water management in agri-food systems in the Ethiopia room in building C. And then the session on Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock in the green room, which is across this corridor, a joint session with the Office of the Chief Scientist, which focus on the science and innovation with one of the sessions of the Science and Innovation Forum that's really focused on towards water efficient agro-food systems that deliver food security for all. Last but not least, we also have the very creative Rome Water Dialogue exhibition in our on the ground floor, so please do stop by and water the 10 challenges and the 10 solutions related to water. With all these technical sessions and also exhibition, I wish all of you enjoy the inspiring debate and insight during this year's Road Motor Dialogue. Thank you, and this session is closed. Thank you.