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Water challenges addressed at UNESCO World Water Forum in Indonesia

UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) promoted international co-operation and innovative solutions aimed at tackling global water challenges at the 10th World Water Forum, held in May in Bali, Indonesia.

The forum, bearing the theme “Water for Shared Prosperity,” brought together policymakers, scientists and stakeholders from around the world for a joint global commitment to water availability and water co-operation.

Emphasized this year were the critical links between water management and climate disruption in which solutions for enhanced co-operation and better data collection to steer the world toward water security and resilience were highlighted.

UNESCO championed three core objectives: enhancing co-operation on water, improving knowledge and data collection, and increasing education and awareness on water-related issues.

“As we face increasing water scarcity and climate variability, it’s important that we increase international co-operation to sustainably measure and manage water resources together and train and empower a new generation of water professionals,” Audrey Azoulay, director-general of UNESCO, said.

From rivers and lakes to transboundary aquifers, states urgently need to collaborate and co-operate in managing the shared water resources that flow freely across their national borders.

The first step often lies in identifying shared water sources. As the leading organization for monitoring transboundary aquifers, UNESCO has helped to identify transboundary systems across 153 countries, including 468 aquifers and 286 rivers and lakes.

UNESCO’s decades-long Governance of Groundwater Resources in Transboundary Aquifers project (GGRETA) has provided assessment, governance and policy aspects of transboundary aquifers across three continents in addition to other localized programs in West Africa, the Mediterranean, the Balkans and South America.

A shared water framework can be a major catalyst for collective development, however, only a minority of riparian countries have transboundary agreements in place. A best practice case lies in the Senegal River Basin where the Manantali Dam, while physically located in Mali, is collectively owned and managed by Senegal River Development Authority which contributes to the energy sector of the countries of the basin (Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal), producing electricity at lower cost and from a clean source.

Need for technological advances
Since the 1980s, data collection on water has worsened and there is an urgent need to harness technological advances to improve it.

UNESCO plays a vital role in harmonizing and making water data and knowledge available through its Water Information Network System, a database of global and local water information, which allows stakeholders to make informed decisions. Complementary to this, UNESCO’s Open Learning Platform helps users develop skills they need to turn this raw data into actionable insights.

As water and climate are intrinsically and increasingly linked, UNESCO has developed the Climate Risk Informed Decision Analysis (CRIDA) methodology to manage water resources in water-stressed areas by using a participatory, bottom-up approach that efficiently identifies hydro-climate vulnerabilities. Flood and drought early warning systems have been implemented in Africa.

In addition to data coming from advanced technologies such as satellite surveillance, UNESCO calls for governments to invest more in training local communities to provide ground-truth data to complement, confirm and calibrate these measurements.

Systematic inefficiencies must also be addressed. It is estimated that today five to 50 per cent of water never reaches its destination due to leaky pipes and faulty systems. Improving the identification and resolution of these leaks represents a major opportunity to reduce water scarcity worldwide.

Increasing awareness
Training a new generation of water professionals who can advise governments to implement water policies that consider economic, social, political, health and agricultural impacts will be key to combat water scarcity in the future.

Each year, UNESCO and its partners trains about 20,000 people through a network of 29 Category 2 research centres, 84 UNESCO university chairs and national committees. This network improves and reinforces the knowledge exchange between countries and provides course, training and activities on specific water issues.

UNESCO also works to increase water education for the general public, and especially children and youth. UNESCO’s awareness campaigns, including through the Global Network of Water Museums comprised of 80 institutions across 38 countries educate 10 million visitors per year on topics ranging from water science to water usage in daily life.

UNESCO also calls for a more inclusive approach to addressing water issues: ancestral knowledge and know-how related to water hold many solutions for sustainably managing this resource. UNESCO’s Links program is working to support Indigenous peoples in sharing their approaches and methods of water management, governance and rights issues.

With 194 member states, UNESCO contributes to peace and security by leading multilateral co-operation on education, science, culture, communication and information. Headquartered in Paris, UNESCO has offices in 54 countries and employs more than 2,300 people. It oversees more than 2,000 world heritage sites, biosphere reserves and global geoparks as well as networks of creative, learning, inclusive and sustainable cities and more than 13,000 associated schools, university chairs, training and research institutions.