More than half of humanity lives in urban areas while cities globally face escalating water risks due to rapid urbanization and climate change. Urban resilience cannot be achieved and sustained without water resilience. Cities are leading efforts to develop innovative, transformative, and locally-led solutions. At the same time, improved multi-level coordination is essential for accelerating climate action for people, economy, and the environment. Convened by the COP28 Presidency, this high-level roundtable gathers cities representatives, national government representatives and cities’ networks to catalyze multilevel action towards urban water resilience.

Drawing from the substantial political traction of the 2023 UN Water Conference and ongoing urban water resilience initiatives, this roundtable will launch a working group on urban water resilience under the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda. The group - emerges from the collaboration between key actors of urban water resilience, and it aims to better incorporate non-state actors from the water sector into the global climate agenda and develop joint targets for 2030.