In this statement to the water community, the Indigenous Peoples delegation at World Water Week 2025 urge effective participation and collaboration to ensure a sustainable future for all.
As World Water Week 2025 draws to a close and participants take home their key insights and memorable moments, the delegation of Indigenous Peoples would like to thank the World Water Week team, SIWI, and all the participants for the inspiring and hopeful conversations that took place. In that same spirit of inspiration, the delegation has prepared a message to the global water family, many of whom will continue their journeys and conversations at the Water for Climate Pavilion at COP30, the UN 2026 Water Conference, and beyond.
We understand that water is central to life. We are made of water and it is to be cherished. We respect water, work with it, live with it and nurture it. We are the custodians, guardians and knowledge holders of the lands, coasts, waters, ice and sky in our Homelands. We have sustainably managed, observed and cared for our lands, waters, and natural resources for the health and benefit of both people and Homelands for millennia. Our spiritual connections, ecological and biocultural knowledge, including lived experiences of climate change, have been, and continue to be, passed down from generation to generation through our stories, art, song, dance and cultural life.
We have different tools and knowledge systems to ensure that Earth and its resources are cared for, the core values of respect, reciprocity, relationships, and responsibility are not confined to physical boundaries such as state lines or borders. Indigenous knowledge systems are fluid, dynamic, and of equal value to all other forms of knowledge.
Challenges at the nexus of water, biodiversity, and climate change know no boundaries. Indigenous Peoples and our communities are at a heightened risk of suffering detrimental effects.
The inherited responsibilities and pressures of climate change are being passed to our future generations, with rising challenges, more restrictions, and a higher demand for our ways of knowing to aid in the solutions of climate-based issues. Ensuring our voices are included, enables the survival of all our future generations to thrive in an uncertain future. We are forecasting the wellbeing and needs of all our people and the next seven generations.
Early, full and effective participation by Indigenous Peoples in governance and decision-making for environmental management, cultural heritage protection, and climate change is essential to enabling a sustainable future. We need to be empowered in generating global climate change solutions that embed both Indigenous knowledge systems and science.
We have an opportunity to move forward together so that Indigenous Peoples are included in the processes required to develop the cultural science, policies and plans for these pressing global challenges that affect us all.
– The Indigenous Peoples delegation at World Water Week 2025