ISO 17298: Biodiversity for organizations – Guidelines and Requirements, aims to provide a practical, scalable framework to help organisations assess their biodiversity impacts, dependencies, risks and opportunities.

With biodiversity under increasing pressure, ISO’s new standard offers an important tool to help organisations take measurable, accountable action to protect and restore biodiversity.

ISO hopes the new standard will empower organisations to strengthen operations, access nature-positive finance, and build trust with customers, regulators, and society – reducing regulatory and reputational risks and the disruption to supply chains and higher operating costs that can be associated with biodiversity loss.

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Amid growing use of alternative water sources in agriculture, experts raised concerns about harmful chemical contaminants entering the food chain. Using a global framework, the group identified high-priority substances – including arsenic, lead, cadmium, fluoride, microcystins, and PFAS (Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances – or ‘forever chemicals’) – based on dietary exposure risks. 

The report highlights gaps in monitoring, regulation and standardised assessment methods. Participants urged enhanced cross-sector collaboration under a ‘One Health’ approach, alongside improved guidance, research and capacity building to better manage chemical risks in agrifood water systems. 

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Conflict has forced more than three million people to flee their homes in Khartoum State. With large parts of the state becoming more accessible, more than 34,000 people have returned since the beginning of 2025. Most are returning to damaged homes in areas where basic services, including water and sanitation, are largely unavailable, with more than one million children estimated to live in the affected localities. 

Recent continuous attacks on power plants have disrupted electricity supply and worsened water shortages, significantly impacting access to safe and clean water. This has forced many families to collect water from unsafe and contaminated sources, increasing the risk of cholera and other deadly waterborne diseases, especially in overcrowded neighbourhoods and displacement sites.  

UNICEF is implementing a multi-pronged cholera response, targeting high-risk communities and supporting essential water infrastructure, including the provision of water treatment chemicals (polymer and chlorine) and a 1000 kilovolt-amperes generator to sustain operations at Al Manara Water Treatment Plant, serving more than one million people in Karrari and Old Omdurman. 

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Titled ‘Drought Impact Monitoring: Baseline Review of Practices’ and released under the banner of the Integrated Drought Management Programme – a joint initiative of the WMO and the Global Water Partnership – the report presents a global overview of current practices, highlighting case studies and identifying examples of good practice, and enabling environments that support effective monitoring.  

The report provides operational guidelines to help countries establish or refine their drought monitoring systems. It also encourages cross-sector collaboration, open databases and tools to improve data accessibility, and tailored systems that can be adapted to local needs. 

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‘Progress on Household Drinking Water and Sanitation 2000–2024’ provides a special focus on inequalities and finds that, while there has been progress over the past decade, billions of people still lack access to WASH services creating health risks and greater social exclusion.

The report finds that people living in low-income countries, fragile contexts, rural communities, children, and minority ethnic and indigenous groups face the greatest disparities.

Key findings include that:

• Despite gains since 2015, 1 in 4 (1 billion people globally) still lack access to safely managed drinking water, including 106 million who drink directly from untreated surface sources.
• 4 billion people still lack safely managed sanitation, including 354 million who practice open defaecation.
• 7 billion people still lack basic hygiene services at home, including 611 million without access to any facilities.
• People in least developed countries are more than twice as likely as people in other countries to lack basic drinking water and sanitation services and are more than three times as likely to lack basic hygiene.
• In fragile countries safely managed drinking water coverage is 38% lower than in other countries.
• While there have been improvements for people living in rural areas, there is still a gap in service delivery. Safely managed drinking water coverage rose from 50% to 60% between 2015 and 2024, with basic hygiene rising from 52% to 71%. Meanwhile, drinking water and hygiene coverage in urban areas has stagnated.
• Data from 70 countries shows that while most women and adolescent girls have menstrual materials and a private place to change, many lack sufficient materials to change as often as needed.
• Adolescent girls aged 15-19 are less likely than adult women to participate in activities during menstruation.
• In most countries with available data, women and girls are primarily responsible for water collection, with many in sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia spending more than 30 minutes per day collecting water.
• As we approach the last five years of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) deadline, achieving the 2030 targets for ending open defaecation and universal access to WASH services will require acceleration, while universal coverage of safely managed services appears increasingly out of reach.

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This is one of five recommendations from the IWC to be fast-tracked by the government – including the creation of a real-time sewage map with automatic data, giving more power to campaigners and environment groups over the clean-up of local rivers, and the creation of regional water boards with powers to clean up rivers and seas locally, and plan essential infrastructure.

In the biggest overhaul of the country’s water sector since privatisation, the new water regulator will take responsibility of water functions across those previously administered by Ofwat (the Water Services Regulation Authority), the Environment Agency, Natural England, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, bringing the sector’s economic, environmental and drinking water regulation under one body.

The Commission’s proposals will be consulted on this autumn and form the basis of a new Water Reform Bill.

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Titled ‘Drought Impact Monitoring: Baseline Review of Practices’ and released under the banner of the Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP) – a joint initiative of the WMO and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) – the report presents a global overview of current drought impact monitoring practices, highlighting case studies and identifying examples of good practice and enabling environments that support effective monitoring.

The report provides operational guidelines to help countries establish or refine their drought monitoring systems and encourages cross-sector collaboration, open databases and tools to improve data accessibility, and tailored systems that can be adapted to local needs.

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The ‘2025 Snow Update Report’ published by the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal, finds that the region experienced its third consecutive below-normal snow year in 2025, with snow persistence (the fraction of time snow is on the ground after snowfall) falling to a 23-year record low of -23.6%.

With nearly two billion people across 12 major river basins relying on seasonal snowmelt from the region, the report’s authors are calling for immediate targeted actions towards adaptive water resource management at basin-level to mitigate impacts on agriculture, hydropower generation, and other vital ecosystem services.

The report finds the most concerning declines in snow persistence impacting the Mekong (-51.9%) and Salween (-48.3%) basins, followed by the Tibetan Plateau (-29.1%), the Brahmaputra (-27.9%), Yangtze (-26.3%), and the Ganges (-24.1%) basins.

The report highlights the need for adaptive infrastructure, including seasonal storage systems, water efficiency measures, national preparedness and response plans, along with national water strategies for hydropower, agriculture, and allied sectors, and a strengthening of evidence-based decision-making and sectoral coordination.

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This 2025 edition of the United Nations (UN) World Water Development Report highlights the importance of mountain waters and alpine glaciers, which are vital for meeting basic human water supply and sanitation needs. 

These water sources are also essential to ensure food and energy security for billions of people living in and around mountain regions and areas downstream, supporting economic growth through various water-reliant industries.  

The report highlights that as the ‘water towers’ of the world, mountains are an essential source of freshwater, storing water in the form of ice and snow during cold seasons, and releasing it during warmer seasons as a major source of freshwater for users downstream. They play a unique and critical role in the global water cycle and affect atmospheric circulation, which drives weather and precipitation patterns. 

While highlighting the concerning impact that climate change is having on mountain and glacial environments, the report offers solutions to help simultaneously mitigate and adapt to rapid changes in global frozen water resources. It provides a clear overview of current environmental conditions, along with recommendations of necessary response measures, including the urgent need to drastically reduce carbon emissions. 

By detailing the connections between mountain freshwater, essential services and the natural world, the report highlights the critical importance of conserving the cryosphere and the potential consequences for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

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Since 1998, the ASCE has prepared a comprehensive assessment of the nation’s major infrastructure systems using letter grades for each category and a concise but replicable methodology to analyse all aspects of system performance.

In terms of water infrastructure, the report assesses dams (D+), drinking water (C-), inland waterways (C-), levees (D+), stormwater (D) and wastewater (D+).
This year’s report finds nearly 50% of the grades increasing for the 18 categories assessed, crediting this to recent federal investments to improve US infrastructure.
The report recommends a comprehensive agenda over the next four years to sustain investment, prioritise resilience, and advance forward-thinking policies and innovations.

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