Draft Strategy Plan for IHP-VII approved

On 12 December 2007, the Draft Strategy Plan for the 7^th Phase of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) entitled “Water Dependencies: Systems under Stress and Societal Responses” was approved.

Each Phase of the IHP has a series of themes that reflect the needs of the Member States of UNESCO. Under each of these themes are focal areas that are more precise in carrying out projects laid out under the 7^th Phase. The themes for IHP-VII are as follows:

1) Adapting to the impacts of global changes on river basins and aquifer systems
2) Strengthening water governance for sustainability
3) Ecohydrology for sustainability
4) Water for life and support systems
5) Water education for sustainable development

Read the Strategy Plan [PDF format - 444 KB]

2^nd Announcement and call for papers for the International Conference on “Water Scarcity, Global Changes and Groundwater Management Responses”

On 1-5 December 2008, UNESCO, the University of California-Irvine and the USGS will convene the International Conference on “Water Scarcity, Global Changes and Groundwater Management Responses” at the University of California-Irvine, USA. The organizers are pleased to release their 2^nd announcement and a call for papers.

The objective of the conference will be to bring together leading water management and climate change experts, scientists and engineers, policymakers, lawyers and economists, and executives of water services of local and regional authorities. The conference will include, but not be limited to, presenting innovative and appropriate technologies to address water scarcity and global change effects on water availability and quality, exchanging ideas on communication among political decision-makers, financial actors, scientists and others as a tool for improved management of water scarcity, establish cooperation mechanisms and produce the Irvine Declaration and Irvine Agenda, a policy proposal and action plan for concrete and practical follow-up to the conference and prepare for the 5^th World Water Forum (Istanbul, Turkey, March 2009).

The conference’s themes will revolve around the following themes, but be broken down further into several dozen topic areas:

1) Issues and challenges of global changes on river basins and aquifer systems;
2) Improving water governance for sustainable responses to water scarcity and global change impacts on water;
3) Ecohydrology for sustainability;
4) Water and life support systems;
5) Traditional and innovative techniques and technologies supporting the identification and remediation of water scarcity issues and global change impacts on water resources; and
6) Information and communication, education and capacity building.

The participants are kindly requested to submit extended abstracts through email UNESCOUC@uci.edu by 30 April 2008.

Read the 2^nd Announcement [PDF format - 3 MB]

PCCP, UNESCO-IHE and IHP-HELP Centre create new postgraduate programmes related to water conflict

Many nations share their water resources. More than 250 major rivers, lakes and aquifers cross national borders, and these are potential sources of conflict, raising serious issues for peace and security. The challenge is to provide the foundation for sustainable and equitable allocation of scarce water resources, which this can act as a catalyst for peaceful cooperation between water users.

A unique opportunity to study conflict management in Dundee and Delft has been created by two new and related master programmes that are offered under the aegis of PCCP, UNESCO’s programme on water and cooperation:
- MSc in Water Management – specialisation Water Conflict Management
- LLM in Water Governance and Conflict Resolution

The Masters programmes provide the participants the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the theoretical background of scientific, legal and institutional aspects of water management. Furthermore it gives them a range of methods, techniques and tools at hand to apply the acquired knowledge, to critically assess the different functions of existing water resources systems, and to enhance their ability to design comprehensive water resource policies and strategies.

Read the postgraduate programmes’ brochure [PDF format - 476 KB]

UNESCO Institute for Water Education: Online courses registration open

UNESCO-IHE would like to announce the opening for registration to its online courses for March 2008. UNESCO-IHE offers high-quality online courses in an increasing number of topics of interest in the water sector. The innovative delivery format makes learning exciting, flexible, interactive and effective. It allows participants anywhere in the world to learn at their own convenience, and immediately apply their newly acquired knowledge in their working environment.

The online courses are intended for professionals working in public and private institutions, NGOs, and academic institutions, and are ideal for those with families who want to upgrade their skills from the comfort of their own home or office.

A typical course covers a four-month period, and requires around eight hours of study per week (total study load 140 hours).

March 2008 Courses:

More information

UNESCO organizes Expert Advisory Group on Water and Cultural Diversity

The first meeting of the expert advisory group for Water and Cultural Diversity took place in Paris on 7 - 8 January 2008. The group is composed of experts representing a variety of disciplines working on water—anthropology, geography, philosophy, ecology, engineering, hydrology—as well as NGO activists and an artist. Representatives of institutional partners such as UNU-IAS and RIHN (Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Japan) also participated in the meeting.

During the two-day meeting, the group developed a vision and an agenda towards meeting the objectives of this interdisciplinary project, which aims to mainstream cultural diversity in integrated water resources management.

The vision and major guiding principle for the project is to recognize and respect cultural diversity and interweave various perspectives towards collaborative and inclusive actions for sustainability of water and cultures. The focal areas of the project were reformulated into the following four topics:

Focus 1: Diversity of cultural meanings, values and perceptions of water
Focus 2: Cultural practices and technologies that affect water
Focus 3: Social, cultural, political and institutional aspects that govern water use
Focus 4: Collaboration and conflict related to uses, access and control over water

Various actions within these focal areas were prioritized, such as collecting and collating existing materials into a web-based database, which will be launched in mid 2008; and identifying additional partner institutions and members for the Community of Practice (CoP), which will be organized through a web-based communication platform.

More information about the Water and Cultural Diversity project or contact Lisa Hiwasaki l.hiwasaki@unesco.org

CAZALAC hosts seminar on the improvement of water resources availability in Santiago

CAZALAC, the Water Centre for Arid and Semi-arid Zones of Latin America and the Caribbean, a category II centre of UNESCO, along with UNESCO-IHP’s G-Wadi Network joined efforts to organize the “International Seminar on Techniques to Improve Water Resources Availability in Dry Zones” from 17-19 December 2007 in Santiago, Chile. The aim of the seminar was to disseminating information on the present status and trends of different practices and techniques to increase the supply of water resources in such scarcity environments.

With participants from well over a dozen countries, the seminar focused on desalinization, reuse of wastewater, fog and dew collection, aquifer recharge, and rain water harvesting surface runoff management.

Workshop website

Access a complete list of water events around the world

What is your role within UNESCO-IHP?
Over the past seven to eight years I have had a series of responsibilities in the IHP family but even before that, in my youth, I was already aware of UNESCO through my Father, Dr Gopal Sigh Puri, who was a highly acclaimed Forest Ecologist, and who introduced me to the realms of UNESCO! I started my university education in the year of the launch of the International Hydrological Decade, IHD (1965), and took hydrology as my post graduate subject, prompted partly by IHD's pioneering work. In 1999, as a result of being appointed Chair of a Commission on Transboundary Aquifers by the International Association of Hydrogeologists, I collaborated very closely with experts of IHP and shortly thereafter, with their support, we launched the ISARM Initiative on shared aquifers. As the network and collaboration between IHP national committees expanded and took on its own momentum, the Secretariat also appointed me as a Chair of the Task Force that helped to formulate IHP-VII (for the years 2008-2013). A third area was bringing 'groundwater' into the scope of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), through developing projects for financing by the GEF. This was initially supported by an inter-agency collaboration with UNEP and now, with the maturation of the UNESCO-GEF programme, I coordinate a UNESCO task force, that proposes to take UNESCO to the status of a GEF Executing Agency.

What is the importance of the ILC's draft Articles on the Use of Transboundary Aquifers?
One of the significant successes of the ISARM Programme has been to attract the interest of many international bodies - a key one being the International Law Commission (ILC). At the time of the 3^rd World Water Forum in Kyoto, the ILC had just appointed a Special Rapporteur to consider the issue of shared natural resources, among them oil & gas and also groundwater resources. There had been some confusion in the 1997 UN Convention on Transboundary Watercourses about 'confined' aquifers, and so the ILC had wanted to review this aspect of the law of natural resources. Through the IHP Secretariat, and especially Alice Aureli, we responded very positively to the ILC, offering to provide the technical expertise and thus started what has been a most enjoyable and intellectually stimulating experience for me! Transboundary aquifers until about 2005 were barely in the focus of environmental policy making - as aquifers contain 99% of all accessible fresh water in them, this was a serious gap in seeking sustainability of the global commons. Driven by the Special Rapporteur Amb. Chusei Yamada’s own interest, the keenness of the expert teams and now, the positive responses of Member States, we are at a point when the Draft Articles on the Use of Transboundary Articles may well turn into a new Convention. 

How do your interactions work within the UNILC and how do you fit in to that?
My role within the process is to interact in two ways – firstly, to keep up to date with the scientific, social and economic aspects of the management of transboundary water resources, e.g. how does globalisation of the world economy impact water in general and aquifers in particular? - and secondly, to work on developing the global ISARM Programme, so that findings from the work of the IHP networks in Member States provides a constant point of reference for the implementation of the draft Articles.  As far as the first is concerned, I am deep in the learning and self development process, through participation in World Bank's, EU's and other projects that are concerned with environmental sustainability. As for the second aspect, I have been synthesising the inventory work in the transboundary aquifers Atlas of the American Continent that provides the on-the-ground evidence to support the provisions of the Articles.

What is UNESCO's role to play in transboundary groundwater issues?  
I think UNESCO has a lot to contribute to the sound management of transboundary water resources not only within the UN System but also beyond. At the HQ level there are several programmes that have matured and are progressing well, PCCP and ISARM to name two, but also FRIEND and HELP. As IHP is unique and has over 30 years in existence, the store of knowledge and experience has to be unrivalled in any other institution. It seems to me that what is somewhat lacking is the conversion of this knowledge into sound policies adopted at the international scale - much has been done, but more needs to be done - especially in the light of climate variability in the forthcoming decades. The real debate, that of increasing global wealth through globalisation of the economy, coupled with increasing intensity of climate variability places the world's poor, who are not benefiting from globalisation, in very precarious situations. IHP's contribution, especially in the context of the wider understanding of transboundary water resources, has to be heard more clearly!

• Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest freshwater lake, and the largest in Africa, with a surface area of 68,800 Km². The lake is shared between Kenya (6%), Tanzania (51%) and Uganda (43%).
• The lake catchment area comprises 193,000 km² with Tanzania occupying 44%, Kenya with 22%, Uganda has 16%, Rwanda 11% and Burundi 7%.
• Despite the size of the lake, much of the surrounding population suffers from lack of access to water supplies. Recent estimates from the Ministry of Water and Livestock Development in Tanzania indicate that only 50% of the rural population and 69% of the urban population in Tanzania have access to reliable water supplies. Similarly, less than 60% of the Ugandan population has access to safe water supply or sanitation services, and in both cases, many rural facilities no longer function. In rural areas of Kenya, such as those close to Lake Victoria, only 31% of the population had access to safe water supplies in the year 2000. Although basin level data on water supply were not available for this study, Lake Victoria and its catchment support about 30 million people. This constitutes about one third of the total population of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
• About 3 million people earn their living directly or indirectly from the fishing industry of Lake Victoria in the three countries. Lake-wide fish production is estimated at between 400 – 500 metric tons with Tanzania landing 40%, Kenya 35% and Uganda 25%. The landed value of this catch is between USD $300 – 400 million annually.
• In addition to providing fishing opportunities and food (fish), the lake water is used to generate hydro-electric power, transport (and communication), tourism, water for domestic agricultural and industrial use, and recreation.
• Over 70% of the population in the Lake Victoria Basin is engaged in agricultural production, mostly as small-scale farmers.
• Unsustainable utilization of the major wetland areas through agricultural activities and livestock overgrazing has greatly compromised their buffering capacity. Soil erosion, caused by changes in agricultural practices, is one of the main processes of land degradation in the Lake Victoria Basin.
• The lake ecosystem is further affected by the inflow of polluted runoffs generated by new land-use practices. Agro-chemical residues (herbicides and pesticides and industrial fertilizers), and to a limited extent, heavy metals resulting from gold mining operations contribute to eutrophication of the lake.uses.

The section “Did You Know...?” is taken from "Water and Ecosystems: Managing Water in Diverse Ecosystems to Ensure Human Well-being", a joint publication of the United Nations University’s International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) and International Hydrological Programme (IHP).

- International Hydrological Programme
- World Water Assessment Programme
- UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education
- Water-related Institutes and Centres under the Auspices of UNESCO
- UNESCO Water-related Chairs

Access the UNESCO Water Portal Update archives (starting at issue N° 85)

For contributions or comments, contact the editor at waterportal@unesco.org