The twelve Leaders who make up the United Nation's High Level Panel on Water have announced a series of early steps taken following on from last September’s Action Plan which called for a new approach to water management that will help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

If the world continues on its current path, projections suggest that the world may face a 40% shortfall in water availability by 2030, affecting at least 1.8 billion people.

First convened in April 2016, the High Level Panel on Water consists of 11 sitting Heads of State and Government and one Special Adviser, to provide the leadership required to champion a comprehensive, inclusive and collaborative way of developing and managing water resources, and improving water and sanitation related services.

The Panel is a time-bound initiative, established for an initial period of two years.

In September 2016, the Panel alerted the world to the combined effects of growing and changing populations, new patterns of intensive water use, increasing rainfall variability and pollution on the risks to poverty eradication and sustainable development.

The Call for Action and Action Plan, released during the United Nations General Assembly on 21 September, set out a transformative agenda putting water at the centre of the global agenda to deliver urgent change and foster synergies.

The Panel said the change requires increased political will and commitment to tackle water challenges at local, national and international levels, under the frame of SDG6 and related goals.

Key early steps announced on World Water Day today, which has taken wastewater as its theme, include:

• The UN has adopted a resolution calling for a new International Decade for Action on "Water for Sustainable Development" 2018-2028. Discussion at the UN will continue to raise awareness and mobilize support for the implementation of SDG6.
• High Level Panel to be convened in Cancun, Mexico on 25 May,to promote through Mexican leadership and best practices new initiatives on water and disaster risk reduction. The Panel will meet Leaders of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction to agree on shared lessons and ways forward to prevent the loss of life and property due to water-related disasters.
• The launch of the World Water Development Report in Durban, South Africa focused on the theme “Wastewater: the untapped resource”.
• The President of Hungary has initiated a dialogue with multilateral development banks and other stakeholders to renew cooperation aimed at significantly increasing investment in the sector.
•  Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia, is announcing the Panel’s Water Data initiative – with a focus on policy, innovation and harmonisation to improve access to water-related data. Australia is also announcing the opening of a challenge to innovators to enable communities to have access to and make use of affordable and up to date water data.
• Mark Rutte, Prime Minister of The Netherlands, recently started a multi-stakeholder dialogue on the approach and principles for valuing water. This dialogue aims at developing a set of shared principles  to motivate and encourage governments, business and civil society to consider water’s multiple values. The dialogue will become global in early April with a web based consultation and  discussion on the draft principles. Regional multi-stakeholder meetings in several countries will be organized in the period May till July 2017.
• The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, will host a meeting of South and East Asian leaders in Dhaka on 28/29 July, to discuss ways and means of strengthening cross-border collaboration and boosting access to safe drinking water and sanitation in Asia.

Floods and droughts are already imposing huge social and economic costs around the world, and climate variability will make water extremes worse.

Nxt year’s World Water Day will have "Nature-based Solutions for Water” as its theme.