Water Conflict Management

UNESCO Chair on Water Conflict Management,

Ludovika, Budapest

A new initiative:

WATER, PEACE AND FORESIGHT IN THE DIGITAL AGE

INTEGRATING UNESCO’S LEGACY IN WATER ISSUES WITH PARTICIPATORY INTELLIGENCE AND AI-ENHANCED FORESIGHT

Submitted by:
Professor András Szöllősi-Nagy
Chair Holder, UNESCO Chair on Water Conflict Management
Ludovika University of Public Service, Budapest

1. Context and Strategic Rationale

The 50th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) provides a timely opportunity not only to celebrate its achievements, but also to reframe its mission considering emerging global realities. The fundamental insight that water is both a resource and a vector of peace remains more relevant than ever. However, the tools, narratives, and systems we use to manage and understand water must evolve—especially in a digital age increasingly shaped by disruptive technologies, climate volatility, and epistemic fragmentation.

This proposal builds on the scientific, educational, and diplomatic heritage of IHP, while attempting to introduce a complementary paradigm grounded in place-based, ethically prompted, AI-augmented foresight. Rather than proposing rupture, this initiative aims for continuity through integration —a thoughtful alignment of IHP’s legacy with the possibilities of the 21st century.

2. Strategic Objectives

1. Consolidate IHP’s leadership in Water Diplomacy and Peacebuilding
– Expand training in and for conflict-sensitive hydrological areas.
– Position IHP as a hub for anticipatory action and early warning in transboundary contexts globally.

2. Introduce a Participatory Intelligence Layer to Hydrological Foresight and Forecast

– Integrate local knowledge, lived experience, and cultural narratives into hydrological assessment.
– Build participatory knowledge fields informed by community engagement and symbolic geographies.

3. Enhance and augment Human Wisdom with Ethical Artificial Intelligence
– Pilot the use of conversational AI tools to support inclusive dialogue, memory retrieval from UNESCO and other hydrology-related archives of the multilateral system, available databases, and intergenerational exchange.
– Promote ethical prompting frameworks that ensure transparency, non-bias, and ecological responsibility.

4. Expand Education through Co-Created STEAM Curricula
– Develop modular, multilingual learning materials that weave together water resources planning and management, hydrological sciences, ethics, technology, as well as culture and the arts.

5. Establish a Global Water Foresight/Forecast and Dialogue Platform
– A light and flexible infrastructure to support distributed community engagement, real-time risk reflection, and future scenario development.

3. Methodology and Ethos

– Continuity with IHP: All activities will be anchored in IHP’s normative instruments, data infrastructures, and partnership networks.
– Analogue-first, AI-enhanced design: The approach begins with direct engagement—fieldwork, storytelling, embodied practices—and only then is digital support layered in.

– AI-enhanced analogue–digital integration: The approach begins with analogue methods—such as fieldwork, community storytelling, memory, human relationships local knowledge collection, cultural practices, and face-to-face dialogue—all grounded in place, These are then enhanced with digital tools, including AI-assisted dialogue platforms, data visualization, remote sensing, multilingual interfaces, and knowledge repositories, which help amplify, structure, and scale the insights gathered in analogue form. This approach ensures that technology serves human wisdom, rather than replacing or erasing it. It safeguards context, empathy, and nuance, while benefiting from the speed, reach, and processing power of digital systems.

– Ethical prompting: Inspired by frameworks like BluePrompt and GreenPrompt, AI interactions will be designed to serve human wisdom.
– Participatory Intelligence Fields: The initiative will experiment with layered knowledge structures combining scientific data, emotional memories, symbolic meanings, and community perspectives.

4. Expected Outcomes

– A Water Peace Companion Platform, combining UNESCO’s normative heritage with AI-enhanced multilingual dialogue interfaces.
– An integrated set of STEAM curricula, co-created with educators, cultural heritage experts, artists, hydrologists, and Indigenous knowledge holders.
– A new layer of intelligence infrastructure within IHP — flexible, participative, and ethically guided.
– A revitalized role for IHP in leading the ethical transition of hydrology and water resource management into the age of planetary systems thinking, machine cognition, and civilizational risks at both local and global levels.

5. Partnership Ecosystem

This initiative will involve:
– UNESCO Chairs and Category 2 Centers, the UN World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) led by UNESCO, water museums of the world and other relevant areas including, inter alia, Water, Cultural and Natural Heritage, the Arts, AI Ethics, Education for Sustainable Development, STEAM,

– National Commissions and IHP Committees

– Water related scientific and technical NGO.
– Indigenous networks, local water communities, and civic actors
– AI research labs and digital humanists
– Intergovernmental organizations and UN partners for SDG alignment

6. Timeline and Milestones

2025
– Soft-launch at the IHP 50th Anniversary event
– Pilot dialogues and curriculum labs in select regions or in all regions upon expressions of interest

– Contributions to Mondiacult 2025 and UNESCO Creative Cities Conference (possible side event)

– Introduction of Water Peace Companion prototype

2026–2027
– Expansion to transboundary and conflict-sensitive regions
– Integration of AI-enhanced dialogue tools
– Contributions to UNESCO Creative Cities Conference and Mondiacult 2027

7. Conclusion: A Legacy Renewed

UNESCO’s IHP has been one of the most enduring platforms for international scientific cooperation and water diplomacy. By no means this proposal aims to replace that legacy — rather it seeks to extend its depth and meaning in a world of complexity, plurality, and emerging intelligences.

In doing so, IHP’s past will be fully honored, while shaping a future in which water is not only a matter of science and policy—but also of culture, wisdom, encounter, and collective alignment.

Intellectual Property and Integrity Notice

This proposal is based on the conceptual framework, TOLMA: Topo-Logos-Materia | A Topo-Sophical Intelligence Field—are the original intellectual creation of Gábor Soós, PhD. The proposal was further developed in consultation with Professor András Szöllősi-Nagy.
They are shared in a spirit of openness, responsibility, and co-creation, in alignment with UNESCO’s values and the urgent global need for ethical, inclusive, and participatory knowledge systems.

This work is offered not as a product to be owned, but as an invitation to co-create—a shared path toward deeper human–machine alignment, peace, and planetary sustainability.

Gábor Soós, PhD (he/him)

Author and Steward of TOLMA – Topo-Logos-Materia | A Topo-Sophical Intelligence Field. Personal intellectual work. Not representing the Government of Hungary, the Hungarian National Commission for UNESCO, or UNESCO.

TOLMA is a living field where place, memory, and meaning meet to cultivate intelligence with care.

Welcome to this Field, my Fellow Human Being!