Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura presented UNESCO's six science prizes for 2001 on October 19 at UNESCO Headquarters, including the Great Man-Made River International Water Prize, which was awarded this year for the first time.

The new $20,000 Great Man-Made River International Water Prize, funded by the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, rewards remarkable scientific research and scientific studies and discoveries in the field of exploration of groundwater and surface water usage in arid zones subject to drought and desertification and contributing to environmental and human development.

The first laureate is the Australian Research Group on Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Department for Water Resources, South Australia, for its internationally recognized contributions to groundwater management in arid areas.

Since 1993, the Research Group succeeded in developing and implementing aquifer storage and recovery (ASR) technology. Its technology has been adopted in many regions of Australia and abroad. It includes ways of injecting urban stormwater into brackish aquifers and methods to prevent clogging and to meet groundwater quality requirements on a sustainable basis. This has proved successful, guidelines have been produced and training courses have been conducted. Numerous projects are now operational and more projects are under development.

Since 1997, the Research Group has developed the ability to store treated sewage effluent in aquifers in winter to meet irrigation demands in summer. Its work has increased our understanding of:

• biological, physical and chemical clogging processes and their inter-relationships,
• methods for measuring survival of pathogens in aquifers,
• the use of isotopes to evaluate carbon, sulphur and nitrogen cycling in aquifers subject to injection of these waters, and
• methods to evaluate the fate of injectants in aquifers.

The Research Group has contributed to environmental improvements by learning how to help restore the coastal environment, create new water resources for agricultural and landscape irrigation, and reduce demand on available water supplies. The latter has helped conserve water in streams where environmental flows need to be enhanced.

Beneficial socio-economic impacts have come from the greening of urban environments where this would otherwise be impossible. Local government and land developers are very aware of the resulting social and commercial benefits. For agricultural water supplies, ASR operations provide farmers with the assurance of the continued availability of water.

The Research Group on Aquifer Storage and Recovery (ASR) of the "CSIRO and Department for Water Resources, South Australia" is receiving this Prize for its outstanding contribution to the sustainable management of water resources in arid and semi-arid areas through integrated approaches to aquifer storage and recovery. Integrated water resources management is an underlying theme of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of UNESCO.