Discuss transboundary water governance and cooperation

The expectation is to expand knowledge about the central themes of the UN 2023 Water Conference. Initially, through a debate on the objectives of the meeting, its main challenges, expressed in the four Interactive Dialogues. Actions related to the Water Action Agenda, which aims to provide quality water to more people through increased international cooperation, will also be discussed. To this end, it is essential to broaden the voices that work in water governance, especially from local communities and indigenous peoples, who are not usually called upon to give their opinion on these issues, especially when they are related to transboundary water, which involve external policies of countries. Often, the cooperation formats adopted favor certain segments of the population, which results in sources of tension within countries that can transcend borders and lead to tensions and conflicts between neighbors. It is also expected to produce syntheses that can be offered to decision makers in South American countries, part of the world that has important reserves of fresh water, both surface and groundwater. Despite this, there are tensions and conflicts that are caused by disputes over the use of water, such as those involving Brazil and Paraguay and, at another time, Argentina and Uruguay.
Such conflicts can be analyzed to prevent new tensions from arising and that cooperation can be established in a more symmetrical way, in order to contemplate the general interests of the population of the countries, considering the changes in the water supply that must occur in the face of climate change. The challenge is to guarantee the use of water without environmental injustice, and to provide quality water for different uses, without impacting other forms of life.
Maintaining ecosystem services and, at the same time, allowing the sustainable use of water is an important challenge to be faced, especially due to changes in rainfall, which affect water replacement. International cooperation on transboundary waters must be expanded beyond water sharing. It should also include analysis of future impacts that will affect freshwater stocks in the future. In short, it will be necessary to build a new political pact for the use of water in the world, through an International Convention on the subject. Situations of cooperation and sharing of water in South America can inspire agreements in other parts of the planet and provide subsidies for a necessary new global order of access to water in the 21st century.
It is expected to contribute to this debate through the proposed events, as well as with analytical syntheses of concrete situations, carried out through academic research.