Building infrastructure is not the same as delivering water services, Glasgow summit concludes

The water sector has to stop treating construction as delivery, leaders at the International Water Association’s High-Level Summit in Glasgow concluded on 5 October, according to IWA’s account of the session.

The summit, “Water for People: From Commitment to Delivery”, brought together government, UN, utility and regulatory representatives to discuss how pledges on water and sanitation turn into services that keep working. The common conclusion, as IWA reported it, was that infrastructure alone is not enough: functioning institutions, people, finance, maintenance and accountability decide whether water and sanitation services work in practice, and experience from operating them needs to feed back into policy.

The size of the gap

The argument matters because of how far the world remains from its water and sanitation goal. The WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme estimates that 2.1 billion people do not use safely managed drinking water — meaning an improved source on their premises, available when needed and free from contamination. About 3.4 billion lack safely managed sanitation, and 1.7 billion lack basic hygiene services such as a handwashing facility with soap and water at home.

Money is only part of the shortfall. UN-Water material published this year found a 46% gap between the funding needed to meet national water, sanitation and hygiene targets and the funding available, based on data from 20 countries. The summit’s point was that even where money is found, weak institutions, data, regulation and maintenance can stop it turning into reliable services.

Next stop: Abu Dhabi

The Glasgow discussion is intended to feed into the 2026 UN Water Conference, which the United Arab Emirates and Senegal will co-host at ADNEC in Abu Dhabi on 8–10 December, with a mandate to accelerate progress on Sustainable Development Goal 6.

The conference will be built around six interactive dialogues: Water for People; Water for Prosperity; Water for Planet; Water for Cooperation; Water in Multilateral Processes; and Investments for Water. The UAE organisers describe the investment dialogue as the first at a UN Water Conference dedicated specifically to investment and finance. The themes were agreed at a meeting convened by the President of the UN General Assembly in July 2025, and Senegal is planning a high-level preparatory meeting in Dakar.

For utilities and suppliers, the emphasis on delivery points to the parts of the water business that rarely make headlines — operations, maintenance, skills and finance — rather than new construction alone.

The Stratawire has also reported this week on wetland maintenance and on a panel about the sector’s skills shortage.

Reported from the IWA World Water Congress & Exhibition, Glasgow, 5 October 2026.

Written with AI assistance from IWA’s published accounts and the cited sources; the session facts were confirmed to The Stratawire at the congress. The illustration is AI-generated and is not a photograph of the event.