Mr Koïchiro Matsuura UNESCO's Director-General © UNESCO, P. Lagès

Director-General participates in the Global Launch of the International Year of Planet Earth (2008)

Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, participated in the Global Launch of the International Year of Planet Earth (2008), which took place at UNESCO Headquarters on 12 and 13 February last. The Year, a joint initiative of UNESCO and the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and which was proclaimed through Resolution 192, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 22 December 2005, has the ultimate aim of drawing global attention to the major role that the earth sciences can play in helping to foster a safer, healthier and more sustainable planet.

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First announcement and call for papers: IV International Symposium on Transboundary Waters Management, Thessaloniki, Greece

Transboundary water resources are increasing in importance as sources of freshwater worldwide. As much as 80% of water resources in the Mediterranean region are shared between two or more countries, and in N. Africa and the Middle East, transboundary groundwaters are the most important source of freshwater.

All available predictions agree that there is a growing water scarcity and it is estimated that within 25 years, two-thirds of the world’s inhabitants will live in countries with serious water problems. Growing demand, inadequate water governance, excessive abstraction and climate change coupled with the fact the quality of water is deteriorating in many parts of the world due to pollution, has put both surface and groundwater resources under severe stress in many parts of the world. Transboundary water resources additionally face political, cultural and ethical challenges.

Scarcity leads to increasing competition among users. Cooperative arrangements, based on a multi-disciplinary approach integrating scientific, social, economic and institutional components, are crucial in order to jointly develop, manage and protect transboundary waters, to avoid conflict, to optimise the sustainable utilisation of these resources and to ensure water security.

The aim of the IV International Symposium on Transboundary Water Management (TWM IV) is threefold:

1. To assess the state of the art and the progress recently made in the sustainable management of transboundary waters by different disciplines such as law, socio-economics and water science.
2. To review current major international programmes concerned with the assessment and management of transboundary water resources.
3. To promote interdisciplinary approaches for integrated transboundary water resources management.

Download announcement [PDF format - 260 KB]
Download submission of abstracts form [Word format - 32 KB]
Download pre-registration form [Word format - 32 KB]

UNESCO aids ESCWA with back-to-back consultative workshops on the management of MEDA transboundary aquifers

The two workshops, “Initial Implementation of Joint Management in the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS): A Case Study in the Western Portion of the Mediterranean” and “Raising awareness and capacity building on joint planning and management in the Nahr el Kabir Al Junoubi Basin (NKJB): Case study in the eastern portion of the Mediterranean” were held 14-17 January 2008 in Cairo, Egypt.

Both consultative workshops were aimed at supporting the preparation of a draft joint management plan aimed specifically at hydrological monitoring network in the NSAS and the NKJB. The main focus of the workshops were the draft reports of the case studies, which were used as basis for the aquifers’ pilot projects conducted by ESCWA (UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) and other partners. Whereas the case study the NSAS, a shared non-renewable aquifer, was shown as an early phase of implementation, the NKJB, a shared renewable aquifer, was presented from the perspective of being at a stage of confidence building and joint management. The NKJB case study showed how to create awareness and build confidence on data exchange and knowledge transfer between the two riparian countries for the overall purpose of strengthening their capacity for inter-state cooperation in managing this basin. The NSAS case study demonstrated how regional monitoring and reporting on inter-regional, regional, national and shared aquifer management can be implemented to strengthen the capacity of the four riparian countries for inter-state cooperation in managing this shared aquifer.

For more information, please contact Ms Raya Marina Stephan

UNESCO’s FRIEND programme researches low flows and drought studies in Europe

In different programmes related to low flow and drought studies, UNESCO’ FRIEND project has worked with various partners in order to further knowledge of trends in these issues in the European region. In a collaborative effort through FRIEND, streamflow data have been brought together from small undisturbed catchments in Scandinavia, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, France, and Spain to investigate regional patterns of trends in stream-flow drought across Europe. The UNESCO-IHP FRIEND European Water Archive has been updated to the year 2005 to include the recent severe droughts and was supplemented by national data for this study. The results will provide opportunity to be compared (i) to an earlier study that was based on data of an earlier version of the archive for the periods of 1930-1990 and 1962-1990 and (ii) to several recent trend studies on large rivers, which are potentially more prone to direct human influences on low flows.

In another example, the primary objective of the NE-FRIEND (Northern Europe) Low Flow group has been to characterise the regional behaviour of low flow and drought and to identify the main governing factors at different scales. Two recent pan-European initiatives have been undertaken within the framework of the FRIEND project, the EU-supported ARIDE project, focusing on the spatial and temporal variability of drought in Europe, and the ASTHyDA project aiming at disseminating knowledge on hydrological drought. This project has aided in the establishment of the European Drought Centre, a virtual centre of European drought research and management organisations.

For more information, please contact Mr. Siegfried Demuth

Access a complete list of water events around the world

Groundwater resources sustainability indicators

Edited by Jaroslav Vrba and Annukka Lipponen
IHP Series on Groundwater No. 14

Identification and development of indicators has been recognized as the cornerstone of the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), the principal product of the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP). Collectively, the UN agencies have resolved that a longer-term horizon for indicator development is needed. This effort has generated enough evidence that data availability for UN programmes, such as WWAP and IHP, is contingent upon the willingness of Member States to contribute data and the sensitivities of the bilateral/multilateral agreements which are already in place. The dependence of indicator development on data can lead to a situation wherein data availability drives the selection of indicators, which, in turn, reinforces the collection of the same data.

The set of groundwater indicators presented in this report is a short list derived from over one hundred conceptual water-related indicators. It is expected that the 3^rd WWDR will fully utilize the set of groundwater indicators for comparing and contrasting the groundwater situation around the world.

Full publication [PDF format – 2.05 MB]

Postdoc - Researcher “Water Footprint” – University of Twente, The Netherlands

The Water Engineering and Management Department carries out multi-disciplinary research and provides education in the areas of water systems and management. The aim is to increase our understanding of the natural processes in water systems and the socio-economic processes that affect these systems, and to develop tools that can effectively be used to support the management of rivers, river basins, seas and coastal zones. One of the priority areas of the research group Water Management is research on water footprints of people, a newly established field of knowledge that receives growing attention from the global academic community, but also from governments, businesses and NGO’s. The University of Twente collaborates with WWF (formerly known as World Wildlife Fund) in further developing concepts and analytical tools for assessing water footprints of products, communities, nations and businesses.

More info [PDF format - 28 KB]

• The Amazon holds around 15% of the usable water on Earth.
• Although there is no consensus regarding the exact extent of the region, it can be seen to cover approximately 8 million square kilometers, of which some 6,878,000 belong to the Amazon River basin.
• Approximately 28 million people were estimated to be living in the Greater Amazon Region in the year 2000, including about 1 million Amerindians.
• More than 60% of the current population lives in urban areas.
• Eight countries and a French Department share the region: Bolivia, Brazil,
• Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, Venezuela and French Guyana.
• The Amazon Region is one of the largest, most diverse, complex and rich natural domains of the planet. The area of the entire Amazon Region corresponds to 1/20 of the surface of the earth, 2/5 of South America, 3/5 of Brazil; it contains 1/3 of the tropical forest, and only a tiny portion of the world population.
• About 30% of all animal and plant species of the world are found in the Amazon region. In the Peruvian Amazon, the largest concentration of species of trees in the world has been registered: 300 species per hectare; in 2km2 630 species of vertebrates were found, including 353 species of birds, and 232 species of butterflies; and 5,000 species of insects in just one tree.
• The river system, Amazonas-Solimões-Ucayalli, represents the longest river in the world, with 6,671 kilometers and the whole basin is constituted by more than 1,000 rivers.
• As the Amazon River approaches the ocean, the sediments accumulate to an estimated quantity of 1 billion tons per year, which the river discharges into the ocean.
• 50% of the water vapor existing in the Amazon is transported westward by the winds coming from the Atlantic Ocean; the other 50% comes from evapo-transpiration of the forest itself.

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