The collaborative series carries the title “A New Era for Water: Policy-Relevant Research for Solutions” and is explicitly designed to advance research and policy responses that the organizers describe as fit for a world that has entered what they call the era of Global Water Bankruptcy. That framing draws directly on a UNU-INWEH report of the same conceptual basis, “Global Water Bankruptcy: Living Beyond Our Hydrological Means in the Post-Crisis Era,” which calls for what the release describes as “honest, science-based adaptation to a new reality.” The collection is intended to serve as a sustained intellectual home for that adaptation agenda, gathering analysis, opinion, and primary research in a single location that policymakers can consult before and after the major UN gatherings.

Timing is a central element of the announcement. With the 2026 United Nations Water Conference and the 2028 UN Water Conference both on the horizon, the collaboration aims to ensure that peer-reviewed and expert-authored water research is visible during the periods when global water agendas are being negotiated. The schedule of relevant meetings is dense: in addition to the two UN Water Conferences, the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the World Water Forum will both take place in 2027, and 2028 marks the conclusion of the Water Action Decade. According to the announcement, this is a critical period for the water sector, and there is a need to build and sustain momentum in the lead-up to these meetings, in which water is a central pillar.

The collection itself will feature a series of invited, narrative-style Opinion and Essay articles as well as research papers published in PLOS Water, organized around key themes related to the UN Water conferences and beyond. Importantly, the organizers have also issued an open call for submissions of relevant primary research papers, with a stated preference for work that has the potential to translate into impactful policy for people and planet. This dual structure, combining commissioned thought pieces with openly submitted research, is intended to ensure that the collection reflects both the most urgent challenges identified by established experts and the most innovative ideas emerging from the wider research community.

Professor Kaveh Madani, Director of UNU-INWEH, emphasized in the announcement that the underlying problem cannot be addressed by research alone. “The challenge of water bankruptcy cannot be solved by science alone,” he said. “It requires turning knowledge into policy and policy into action. Through our partnership with PLOS Water, we are fostering a stronger bridge between research, decision-making and practice, ensuring that diverse voices help shape global water agendas at the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences and beyond.” His comments position the collection not as a conventional special issue but as a deliberate mechanism for moving scientific findings into the rooms where water policy is negotiated.

The editors of PLOS Water echoed that ambition from the journal’s side. Professor Sera Young, co-Editor-in-Chief of PLOS Water and an anthropologist at Northwestern University, described the collaboration with UNU-INWEH, which she called the UN’s think tank for water, as “a tremendous opportunity for researchers from any background to publish their work in a forum that can feed directly into the policymaking process.” Her co-Editor-in-Chief, Professor Pierre Horwitz, an Emeritus Professor at Edith Cowan University, characterized the collaboration as “Exciting: an invitational space for the arts, humanities, and sciences, publishing global and place-based water-focused materials; transcending boundaries for policy and practice.” Together, the two editors signal that the collection will welcome contributions well beyond the natural sciences, including humanities and arts perspectives on water.

According to the announcement, the work published under the series will aim to challenge the status quo, make calls to action from within and across disciplines, sectors, and communities, and create a vision for how water research can translate into transformative policy and practice. In pursuing that goal, PLOS and UNU-INWEH state that they seek to create sustainable and lasting impact through intellectual stewardship. To nurture momentum ahead of the global meetings, the organizers argue that it is essential to hear from a diversity of the brightest voices who can spotlight the most urgent challenges and showcase the most innovative ideas in the water sector in ways relevant for policymakers. The collection is designed to house this thought leadership in one easy-to-locate, open-access, searchable location, removing the paywalls and fragmentation that often separate researchers from the policy audiences they hope to reach.

The initiative is anchored in the broader sustainable development agenda. Achieving SDG 6, “clean water and sanitation for all,” is described in the announcement as essential for the health of people and the planet, and progress toward that goal is framed as requiring a joint multilateral and multi-sectoral endeavor conducted from a place of solidarity and cooperation. Technical, political, financial, and public efforts in isolation, the release argues, will not be sufficient; connected and collaborative cross-disciplinary communities are imperative.

The institutional background of the partners helps explain the scope of the collaboration. UNU-INWEH marks its 30th anniversary of operation in 2026 and is one of 13 institutions that make up the United Nations University, the academic arm of the UN. Known as “The UN’s Think Tank on Water,” the institute addresses critical water, environmental, and health challenges around the world through research, training, capacity development, and knowledge dissemination, contributing to solving pressing global sustainability and human security issues of concern to the UN and its Member States. Headquartered in Richmond Hill, Ontario, UNU-INWEH has been hosted and supported by the Government of Canada since 1996, and with a global mandate and extensive partnerships across UN entities, international organizations, and governments, it leads UNU Hubs in Calgary, Hamburg, New York, Lund, and Pretoria.

PLOS, for its part, is a non-profit organization on a mission to drive open science forward with measurable, meaningful change in research publishing, policy, and practice. Building on a legacy of pioneering innovation in open publishing, the organization continues to reimagine models to meet open science principles, removing barriers and promoting inclusion in knowledge creation and sharing, and publishing research outputs that enable everyone to learn from, reuse, and build upon scientific knowledge. The pairing of a UN water research institute with an open-access publisher is presented in the announcement as a natural fit: the collection’s papers will be freely available, searchable, and positioned to inform the 2026 and 2028 UN Water Conferences, the 2027 SDG Summit and World Water Forum, and the conclusion of the Water Action Decade in 2028. Researchers interested in contributing primary research to the series can respond to the open call for submissions, with the organizers particularly encouraging studies whose findings hold clear potential for translation into policy for people and planet.

Subject of Research: A collaboration between PLOS Water and UNU-INWEH to publish policy-relevant water research ahead of UN water conferences

Article Title: New collaboration announced between United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and PLOS Water

Article References: New collaboration announced between United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health and PLOS Water. Original publication (Bibliographic details unavailable.)

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: PLOS Water, UNU-INWEH, water policy, UN Water Conference, Global Water Bankruptcy, SDG 6, open access, water governance, science policy, Water Action Decade, hydrology, sustainability