IMTA Brings Global Leaders Together to Advance Water Justice

The Mexican Institute of Water Technology (IMTA), carried out the Second International Day of Water Justice. The initiative aims to strengthen cooperation among local communities, researchers, policy makers and international authorities to promote universal access to safe, affordable drinking water. During the inauguration, Alicia Bárcena, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT), stressed that water justice is not only about figures or infrastructure, but about equality, dignity and rights. 

“We need scientific evidence to understand the magnitude of the challenge and the commitment of all decision-makers, but we also need the knowledge of peoples, Indigenous peoples and local communities, whose relationship with water is not merely one of consumption, but of reciprocity and respect,” she said. She emphasized that ensuring equitable and sustainable access to water as a human right helps reduce inequalities, prevent conflicts and strengthen social cohesion. “No public policy will be sufficient without the active participation of communities and without dialogue between science, government and traditional knowledge.”

In this context, Bárcena highlighted that through the National Agreement for the Human Right to Water and Sustainability, a total volume of more than 4.4 billion m3 of water has been recovered nationwide by reviewing allocations and concessions granted to both the private and public sectors.

She also underscored the recent enactment of the General Water Law and reforms to several provisions of the National Water Law, aimed at establishing a new model of water management in which the environmental sector can play a central role in expanding service coverage, sewerage and sanitation. In addition, she recalled that through coordination among different government agencies and local governments, work is underway to restore some of the country’s most polluted rivers: the Lerma–Santiago, the Atoyac and the Tula.

In 2026, more than MX$1.03 billion (US$75.7 million) will be allocated to the recovery of the Lerma–Santiago River, benefiting more than 21 million people. These investments will focus on increasing wastewater treatment capacity, expanding inspection and enforcement actions, consolidating socio-environmental restoration projects, developing eco-hydrological master plans, implementing flood-control works, and strengthening the monitoring of both water quality and quantity throughout the basin.

Patricia Herrera, Director General, IMTA, said that in the face of the current global water bankruptcy recently warned about by the United Nations, IMTA has a responsibility to contribute solutions to growing water challenges.

The report published by the United Nations University (UNU) describes a shift from water insecurity to outright bankruptcy, defined as the persistent overextraction of surface and groundwater relative to renewable flows and safe depletion levels, resulting in irreversible or prohibitively costly losses of water-related natural capital.

The document underscores the scale of the challenge: 75% of the global population lives in countries where water is scarce or unsafe; more than half of the world’s large lakes are shrinking; around 2 billion people live on land affected by subsidence caused by groundwater overexploitation; and roughly 410 million ha of natural wetlands, an area nearly equivalent to the size of the European Union, have disappeared over the past five decades.

IMTA’s Institutional Program 2025–2030 sets out five main objectives aimed at strengthening national water-related capacities. These include consolidating national and international cooperation on water policy and increasing water security in the face of overexploitation, pollution and extreme climate events.

The program also seeks to develop scientific and technological solutions to improve water availability and efficiency of use; promote methodologies for the mitigation and control of emerging contaminants; and advance participatory water governance with an environmental justice approach.

The strategies and lines of action outlined in the document are directly linked to major national commitments, including the National Development Plan 2025–2030, the Environment and Natural Resources Sectoral Program, the National Water Program, as well as the 2030 Agenda and Sustainable Development Goal 6 on clean water and sanitation.

The meeting organized by IMTA, held on Jan. 26 and 27, focuses on articulating traditional community knowledge with science, as well as on the exchange of national and international experiences aimed at building transformative solutions to inequalities in access to, use of and governance of water. 

The event includes keynote lectures and presentations of community-based, national, and international experiences that highlight the importance of guaranteeing the human right to water and sanitation as fundamental pillars of water justice.

Participants in the event included, Ernesto Céspedes, Mexico’s Ambassador to Australia; Shozab Abbas, Pakistan’s Ambassador to Mexico; José Luis Espinoza, Representative of the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (Amexcid); and Quentin Grafton, Leading Promoter, Water Justice for All initiative, who coordinates the Water Justice Hub, the Just Water Alliance and the UNESCO Chair in Transboundary Water Economics and Governance.