The theme of World Water Day 2021 "Valuing Water" is in line with that of the 9th World Water Forum: "Water Security for Peace and Development". It thus makes it possible to question water in all its forms through the different dimensions of sustainable development in the face of the many risks facing our societies and our environment.
Indeed, the Forum through its four thematic priorities (Water Security and Sanitation; Water for Rural Development, Cooperation and Tools and Means, including issues related to Financing, Governance and Management of Innovation and Knowledge) re-examines the societal and environmental paradigms that contribute to the promotion of water for peace and development in the world.
March 22, 2021, one year before the 9th World Water Forum (J-365), is a great opportunity, a pivotal step to exchange and share the mid-term results of the preparatory process and to mobilize again the actors on the new roadmap following the postponement of the Forum from March 21 to 26, to March 2022, and the new stakes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated and reaffirmed the strategic importance of water in building sustainable development and resilience of the global economy. It also reinforced the urgent need to mobilize the international community in all its diversity and at all levels to make the 9th World Water Forum an effective Forum (socially, politically, economically), a catalyst for action to advance the sustainable development agenda. It is in light of these stakes and challenges critical to stability, peace and development that the organizers of the Forum have planned to organize various activities in order to launch the countdown to the 9th World Water Forum in Dakar on Day D-365.
