Summary for Decision Makers: Deep Words, Shallow Words: An Initial Analysis of Water Discourse in Four Decades of UN Declarations

This four page summary for decision makers is based on a special UNU-INWEH contribution to Rio+20 that examines the changing language of water and associated key concepts in high-level declarations from eleven UN conferences on water and the environment over the past forty years. Multiple themes are addressed, and a four page ?Summary for Decision Makers? distills lessons learned. Effective Strategies to highlight and strengthen key concepts are suggested. We hope the study will facilitate the efforts of Ministers and Policy Makers to both build on and avoid unnecessary overlap with work done at previous meetings. The findings of the report should assist drafters of CSD and other future UN Declarations in ensuring their outputs are effective, robust and reflect mindful and cumulative deepening of work undertaken at previous high-level meetings.