Scientific Forum Highlights Nuclear Solutions for Water Sustainability

Just opened this year’s #ScientificForum, focused on a topic that touches everyone: water.

Nearly half the world’s population faces severe water scarcity for part of the year. Climate change is melting glaciers, drying lakes, and salinizing groundwater. At the same time, demand… pic.twitter.com/mad0MflNPJ

— Rafael Mariano Grossi (@rafaelmgrossi) September 16, 2025

The IAEA is addressing water pollution, including through its flagship initiative on Nuclear Technology for Controlling Plastic Pollution (NUTEC Plastics), which is developing radiation techniques to upcycle plastic waste to prevent it from reaching water sources. The Philippines will host an International High Level Forum on NUTEC Plastics on 25 and 26 November 2025. Treating wastewater is one of the uses of the IAEA’s new mobile electron beam, which can kill microorganisms and transform contaminants into harmless compounds.

Nuclear techniques?such as?isotope hydrology?support water sustainability by?tracking water sources and movement, assessing groundwater quality and quantity, and monitoring the impacts of climate change on water resources. Nuclear technology is also used to improve water quality by addressing water pollution using radiation technology and to address water scarcity by improving desalination and water use efficiency in irrigation. These and other nuclear techniques provide decisionmakers with essential data for managing water scarcity, ensuring water availability for growing populations and protecting vital freshwater ecosystems from pollution and degradation.?

Technical sessions during the Scientific Forum addressed tools for advancing global water sustainability — including data and information, capacity development, governance, financing and innovation — as well as the impact of climate variability and pollution on water resources. Numerous speakers called for strengthening the link between research and policy, and stressed the importance of effective communication to inform decisionmakers and the public about the need to protect and preserve global water resources.

Forum participants learned that the IAEA’s Global Water Analysis Laboratory (GloWAL) Network has begun accepting applications from laboratories around the world. The GloWAL Network will help countries track and manage their water resources more effectively, produce data for policy making and encourage regional and global collaboration on water resource management.

Given the urgency of global water challenges, scientific and diplomatic efforts must be harnessed to protect this shared resource, said Anne-Isabelle étienvre, Chair of the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission. France supports research on water preservation with specific investment programmes that bring together policymakers, scientists and industry. Despite the scale of the challenge, she said that “science always harboured hope.”

Celeste Saulo, Secretary-General of the World Meteorology Organization, reiterated this view. “Too much of the world’s water remains understudied, unmeasured and unmanageable, but nuclear science, working alongside meteorology and hydrology, can help” to close this data gap. She called for scaling up innovation, data sharing, and investments in capacity building. “We can turn knowledge into resilience, ensuring that tomorrow’s generations inherit water security and not water risks,” she said.

Such actions need to happen at the global level, emphasized Gonzalo Alfonso Gutiérrez Reinel, Secretary General of the Andean Community. “It is essential to strengthen international cooperation, prioritizing strategic areas on a global level. This enables progress toward integrated, resilient and sustainable water management,” he said.

ángel Manuel Manero Campos, Peru’s Minister of Agrarian Development and Irrigation, emphasized the IAEA’s role in addressing global water challenges. “We have an excellent opportunity to prove that nuclear technology applied peacefully, responsibly, can help to efficiently resolve some of today’s major challenges,” he said.

The IAEA serves the needs of its member countries by building capacity, technical expertise and scientific networks. It advances knowledge and international collaboration through coordinated research projects and IAEA collaborating centres. Numerous speakers discussed how the IAEA supported their countries in addressing water challenges ranging from improving desalination and irrigation to tackling plastic pollution.

This year, Niger signed an agreement with the IAEA, backed by World Bank funding, to build a national water quality laboratory and modernize the country’s regional laboratories to strengthen water resource management. Maizama Abdoulaye, Niger’s Minister of Environment, Hydraulics and Sanitation, highlighted that partnerships between the scientific community and development partners can “transform water challenges into development opportunities.”

Shan Zhongde, Chair of the China Atomic Energy Authority, highlighted China’s long history of collaboration with the IAEA to protect water resources, including IAEA support for the creation of China’s first isotope hydrology laboratory in 1990. He said that China would continue working with the IAEA to develop nuclear solutions for sustainable water resources and resilient ecosystems.

The Scientific Forum concluded with a discussion of the importance of partnerships and resource mobilization to water sustainability. “Science alone is not enough, we need resources and partnerships to bring nuclear solutions where they are most needed,” said Director General Grossi.

Najat Mokhtar, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications, stressed the importance of implementation. She called for embracing new technologies to bridge this gap. “Let’s not waste time,” she urged; “let’s work together to use science to manage water better.”

Sustainable water management requires strong science and a robust policy framework, said Tatiana Molcean, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. In her view, combining the 2016 Water Convention framework with the IAEA’s technical tools could address the water-food-energy nexus.

Winston Yu, Water Practice Manager at the World Bank, said that globally, $165 billion is invested annually in the water sector by governments, international organizations, civil society and the private sector, but trillions are needed. He agreed with María Jimena Durán from the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Lina Escobar-Rangel from the Interamerican Development Bank, that the private sector must be involved to meet the huge need for water finance. Currently the private sector contributes only two percent of global water funding.

Yu pointed to Niger’s agreement with the IAEA as a good example of how multilateral development banks can combine financing and policy engagement with IAEA expertise to help countries improve water resource management. “There is huge scope for the IAEA to work with all the development banks to bring together technologies with financing,” he said.

Water finance will be a focus at the 2026 United Nations Water Conference, according to Mohamed CBC Diatta, Senegal’s Sherpa for the conference, which he said will “harness science, multilateralism, cooperation and innovation” and build connections between sectors to help protect our most precious shared resource. Nuclear sciences have a critical role to play in building these connections and the IAEA will continue to work with countries to strengthen their capacity to use these tools to address their critical water challenges.