🙏🏽 After an amazing weekend at Biberbau, Flussdelta, and Otterbucht with over 250 people, we want to say THANK YOU to all of you! We had a wonderful time with you – it was inspiring to see so many of you engaged and enthusiastic. That alone made the months of work worthwhile 💙 We’re getting water moving!
We’ll share a few results here – the rest is still being organized and will be made accessible soon.
📰 Media Coverage and Streams 🎧
🎧 Listen to the Water Conference
Recordings of many of the exciting workshops and talks are available at the fantastic Freies Radio Nordpol:
👉 https://radio.nrdpl.org/wasserkonferenz/
📰 „Water On!“: The weekend edition of Neues Deutschland focuses on our water conference.
You can find the articles online (german):
🍂 Water Emergency: How Germany is slipping into a water crisis:
👉 https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1190157.fruehjahrsduerre-wassernot-in-deutschland.html
✊🏾 Why It’s Time for a Water Movement – Interview with Alex Wernke from the Climate Collective:
👉 https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1190154.wasserkonferenz-klimaaktivist-die-krisen-werden-kommen.html
🏭 The Big Fish: Who the major industrial water consumers and polluters are:
👉 https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1190161.wasserknappheit-die-grossen-fische.html
🤝 The Water Alliance: Water as the link between the climate movement and agriculture:
👉 https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1190163.duerre-die-wasserallianz.html
🌊 Solidarity-Based Disaster Relief: How Flooded People UK organizes flood victims:
👉 https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1190156.hochwasser-hilfe-im-katastrophenfall.html
❤ A personal report covering many conference topics and experiences by Gesa Maschkowski from Bonn im Wandel (german):
👉 https://www.bonn4future.de/de/artikel/wasserbewegung
📸 You can also find impressions from the conference on Instagram:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/water.justice.now/
📌 Goals of Our Movement Conference
Beyond deepening our understanding of the water crisis and exploring just solutions, our goals were to connect with each other, discuss strategies, and spark new campaigns and actions. On Sunday during the conference, we had an in-depth exchange: What kind of movement do we need in the face of droughts, storm surges, and industrial water grabbing? What protest actions make sense? Where do we go from here?
1. Our Waters Connect Us 💧❤️
The water justice movement organizes locally around specific conflicts and the protection of common waters. Water connects us across watersheds and beyond borders. The movement supports local struggles by networking with communities on the ground and co-developing strategies for change. Rather than imposing solutions from the outside, it creates spaces for self-organization and solidarity-based collaboration.
Like in the climate justice movement, the water justice movement must also include spaces for grief and anger about what has been lost.
2. Solidarity-Based Disaster Relief ✊🏽🌱
Participants agreed that those affected by extreme weather events must be heard in the long term – by us and by politicians. Over the coming years, local networks and spaces for skill sharing are to be established. These aim to support affected individuals while also pushing the state to act with foresight. Importantly, these networks should not become unpaid services for the state, but rather a movement for resistance & reconstruction.
3. Fair Water Distribution 🚫💰💦
Participants want to advocate for transparent and equitable use of freshwater resources. To achieve this, the budding water movement’s sense of agency must be strengthened through shared spaces for exchange and joint actions. Those standing in the way of fair water distribution must be clearly named:
#takedowntesla #rwe #nestlé #leag #redbull #agribusiness #golfcourses
💧Our Vision for a water-just world 🌱
📆 Strategy & Action – What’s Next?
👉 All water related camps, actions, and events can be found in the movement calendar: klimax.online/bewegungskalender
👉 Networking Meeting & Water Tent at the System Change Camp:
The SCC will likely take place August 14–21 in West Germany close to Frankfurt or Kassel.
There, we’ll organize the next nationwide networking meeting of the water movement.
You can also help plan the Water Tent program. If interested, reach out to: programm@wasserkonferenz.org