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Last week’s flash floods in India, Nepal and Spain triggered by heavy rainfall are the latest in a string of water-related disasters from Germany to South Sudan to the United States.

Flood-related catastrophes have increased by 134 per cent since 2000, compared with the two previous decades, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). As a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores, rising global temperatures are dramatically affecting the water cycle, making floods and droughts more extreme and frequent. It’s an issue that will be in the forefront of the minds of those attending the United Nations Climate Change Summit, known as COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, at the beginning of November.

Against that backdrop, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partners have been working to help lessen the impact of flooding in countries around the world.

“UNEP doesn’t have a magic wand, but we work with partners to accelerate flood resilience, build capacity, promote sustainable development, and gather and analyse the all-important data to inform policymaking,” says UNEP freshwater ecosystems expert Lis Mullin Bernhardt. “We’re building resilience by advancing Sustainable Development Goal 6 on water and giving countries significant opportunities to advance their broader development and climate agendas effectively, consistently across sectors and with longer-term viability.”

Flooding destroys biodiversity, lives, livelihoods, infrastructure and other assets. It can also compound health hazards, such as cholera, as sewers overflow and freshwater and polluted water mix. Standing floodwater may encourage the breeding of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in some places. COP26 has been billed as a last chance to make significant progress in these and related flood mitigation and adaptation areas, such as flood early warning systems.

The WMO report makes a strong case for investing in integrated water resources management, a comprehensive framework for managing water resources and balancing social and economic needs while protecting ecosystems, such as wetlands that mitigate flooding.