The Netherlands at World Water Week 2026
The world’s water community gathered this summer in Stockholm for the World Water Week, an emblematic sector’s event that aimed to advance solutions for a more just and water-secure future under the theme “Water for People and Progress”. For the Dutch water sector, the event was a key platform to exchange expertise, forge partnerships and help translate global ambition into action.
The Government of the Netherlands, strategic partner of World Water Week, contributed to the week’s programme co-hosting a variety of sessions and activities, and supported the sector’s visibility with the iconic Netherlands Pavilion.
Shaping future agriculture food and trade systems
At the Netherlands Pavilion, Dutch Water Envoy Meike van Ginneken drove attention on the impact that globally traded fresh products have on local water supply changes with a single bucket of blueberries. Roughly 100 litres of invisible water are embedded in them, from cultivation in Peru to a Dutch breakfast table. This visual example set the tone for “Water for Tomorrow”, the Government’s flagship session.
Water for Tomorrow is a new Dutch initiative that addresses the water footprint of the fruit and vegetables imported by the Netherlands. 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.
The session emphasised the importance of landscape-based water governance for more sustainable and efficient food systems. 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”.
Water for Tomorrow 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.
Water in Business
As in previous years, the Dutch Government and the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) co-hosted the Water in Business Programme, a three-part programme that focuses on how the private sector can treat water as a core business and seeks to identify practical ways for scaling water for resilience economies and societies. This year, discussions on how business should respond to water-related risks were held. “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.”
During the sessions, a challenge came up repeatedly: companies try to solve water risk with company-level tools even though the problem sits at system level. A company can improve its own efficiency while the wider catchment continues to deteriorate. In addition, businesses navigate a patchwork of standards without a shared way of measuring and comparing water impacts across a value chain. By the end of the discussions, it was clear that the answer to this challenge lies in building partnerships, connecting corporate action to the wider system, and advancing blended and impact investment.
The shift in tone around regulation was also noticeable during the sessions. Less than a decade ago, only a 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.
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 from 8 to 10 December in Abu Dhabi.
Water Forward is one of the initiatives that stood out the most. This World Bank-led coalition launched in April 2026 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 in Stockholm 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 puts 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.”
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.
