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His Excellency Abdulla Balalaa, Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Energy and Sustainable Affairs, participated in a ministerial roundtable, convened by the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, on ‘Tackling water security across the climate-nature-development nexus’, to underscore the need for urgent collective action and sustained leadership on the global water crisis. 

Chaired by Her Excellency Baroness Chapman, the United Kingdom’s Minister of State for International Development, Latin America and the Caribbean, the roundtable brought together Ministers from Senegal, Malawi, Morocco, Nigeria, Nepal and Bangladesh, as well as senior leaders from key multilateral institutions and international organizations – including the European Commission, the World Bank, UNICEF, UN Water, Water Aid, and the Global Commission on the Economics of Water – to identify priority areas of collaboration over the next year for a systemic shift in addressing water across the climate-nature-development nexus.

During the session, H.E. Balalaa highlighted the UAE’s preparations for the 2026 UN Water Conference, and emphasized that the event will focus on accelerating the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6, stating “This Goal is the catalyst and enabler of all Sustainable Development Goals and all our global societal, environmental and economic goals.” 

Participants agreed to leverage key moments over the year ahead to build and sustain leadership on water, sanitation and hygiene to enable the delivery of all SDGs; work in multi-stakeholder partnerships to drive scalable, innovative and inclusive solutions to the water crisis; and cooperate with existing UN processes to strengthen the integration of water within the international agenda. 

H.E. Balalaa also attended a reception ceremony hosted at Buckingham Palace by His Majesty King Charles III, on ‘Water and Climate’, in collaboration with WaterAid.

The Ministerial roundtable convened following the Organizational Session of the 2026 UN Water Conference, which took place on March 3rd, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, where over 70 participants – including both Member States and stakeholders – shared their recommendations for the themes of the six interactive dialogues of the Conference. The themes will be decided in a preparatory meeting convened by the President of the General Assembly on July 9th, 2025.