As the world prepares for a pivotal climate conference in Paris this December, countries are offering their national plans to tackle a changing climate. These plans, known as intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), contain details of what each country is prepared to do as part of a new global climate agreement. While the public focus is often on mitigation – how much countries are willing to reduce emissions, by when, and with what degree of transparency – adaptation to the impacts of climate change demands the same level of attention. In fact, the last round of international climate talks in Lima invited parties to include adaptation in their INDCs.

The World Economic Forum recently named water crisis the world’s number one risk for the next 10 years for its potential impact on people and industry. Indeed, as the global community grapples with climate change – and environmental change of all kinds – understanding the fundamental nature if water to human society is crucial. The input report for this year’s World Water Week, released yesterday by the Stockholm International Water Institute, in fact argues that getting water management right is a prerequisite for sustainable development.

While it is intuitively clear that economic growth is related to water security – understood here as both water availability and also exposure to water-related risks such as drought and floods – there has been very little empirical evidence of this relationship to date.

Last week, the United Nations concluded one of the last negotiations on the road to adopting the Sustainable Development Goals in September. We’ve entered the home stretch of a process that has taken more than two years, bringing governments, civil society organizations, and communities together to define the development goals and targets that UN member states will be expected to aim for over the next 15 years.

President Obama’s recently announced Clean Power Plan – potentially a major turning point in the fight to contain greenhouse gas emissions and stop the slide toward an ever-warming Earth – is oddly both a courageous step in the right direction and codification of a process already underway.