About the UAE
The UAE’s relationship with water is personal to our founding story.
A founding commitment
The UAE’s Founding Father, the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, remembered for his generosity and commitment to collective progress, helped dig and restore aflaj with his own hands, an archival anecdote captured by the National Library and Archives of the UAE, and reflected in the historical image of Sheikh Zayed at Al Dhaid farms in Sharjah on 7 March 1970. This commitment to humanity, innovation, and wise stewardship continues to guide the UAE today.
There is no future without water
Water shapes our history, our present, and our shared future.
It is the foundation for sustainable and equitable human dignity, for collective stability, and for prosperity. It is truly our most precious global resource.
In the UAE, we are used to water scarcity.
We face extreme heat, in one of the most water-scarce regions. Our arid environment has always led us to be innovative and resilient, with a clear focus on building for tomorrow. We learned this ingenuity and resilience from our ancestors, who saw optimism and opportunity, for all, amidst a dry and salty landscape. It is their values and commitment to humanity, innovation, and wise stewardship of our resources that continues to guide us.This stewardship was forged by scarcity. Long before modern infrastructure, communities developed the ancient falaj irrigation systems: a culture built around conservation, collective management, and doing more with less. That heritage is still visible today, from the palm gardens of Al Ain Oasis to the mountain-fed wadis of Ras Al Khaimah, and it continues to inform how the UAE approaches water.
Without this commitment to innovation,
the UAE, and our region, would not have access to freshwater. More than 90 percent of drinking water across the Gulf comes from desalinated water, which is produced by more than 400 plants across the region. In the UAE, we have 70 desalination plants alone that provide 40 percent of our drinking water. For the UAE, water is synonymous with our security, safety, and stability.
From solutions to systems leadership.
Continuing a legacy of stewardship, the UAE is investing in the next era of water: integrated climate-water strategies, clean desalination, biosaline agriculture, and AI-powered water intelligence. Beyond its borders, it supports water access and infrastructure across water-stressed regions, from the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development’s investments to the Zayed Sustainability Prize, with the UAE–Senegal co-hosting partnership as a model of inclusive multilateralism. This commitment is led from the top: His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the UAE, and His Highness Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs, continue the founding legacy of water stewardship at home and abroad.
Water is life. And water is finally taking centre stage.
The 2026 UN Water Conference is a global moment of convergence on water. We will be Co-Hosting the first UN Conference dedicated to accelerating the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6: ensuring the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Water is life, and SDG 6 is critical to advancing progress across the entire Sustainable Development agenda.As Co-Host of the 2026 UN Water Conference, we place inclusivity and co-creation at the heart of our process. We demonstrated our theory of change at COP28 and continue to carry this tenet forward: that inclusive dialogue accelerates transformative progress.
The UAE is committed to continuing to build momentum on water
and to leverage the power of dialogue and co-creation. We need to co-create innovative solutions that include hearing from both the most affected and the most capable of making the greatest impact. We need to empower youth from around the world to continue to protect and preserve water for all. And we need to continue to be inspired by our ancestors and those who have resourcefully cared for waterways and ecosystems as we design our future.
We are not naive about the scale of the challenge before us,
nor about the complex geopolitical, financial, and multilateral contexts in which we are operating. But we also recognise the opportunity the 2026 UN Water Conference presents: to improve lives, restore ecosystems, and accelerate access to clean water and sanitation systems for all.
The falaj: to share fairly
The falaj sits beneath daily life in the UAE. Quiet, ancient, unseen. The word falaj itself means “to share fairly”: the system begins not with engineering but with a shared commitment to share. A falaj works because three things hold together at once. Take any one away and the system fails:
The falaj is among the world’s oldest water networks, and a triumph of shared responsibility. Every community received its share, and the system worked because everyone had a stake in maintaining it. This Conference is built on the same principle. Water only works when intention, stewardship, and ingenuity hold together.