| Celebrating World Water Day KYOTO/BURLINGTON, 22 March 2003-On the occasion of World
Water Day, the UNEP GEMS/Water Programme has announced that
it will be spearheading a new international study on "Vulnerability
of Water Resources to Environmental Change in Africa."
Freshwater water quality, quantity and security have grown
to be the major international issues in the lead up to this
week's Third World Water Forum in Kyoto. An estimated 1.4
billion people lack safe drinking water; 3.3 billion cases
of human illnesses and 5.4 million deaths per year are predicted
to occur due to poor quality water. Some two thirds of the
world's population could face shortages of clean freshwater
by the year 2025.
The situation in Africa is even more urgent. Fifty years ago,
there was four times more water for each African than there
is today. Now there are acute water shortages for crops and
for livestock, for industry and sanitation in the cities, and
almost everywhere drinking water is increasingly scarce. "It's one thing to have water, it's another thing to
know if it is safe to drink," says Dr. Richard Robarts,
Director of the Burlington-based GEMS/Water, in launching
the study. "Safe, clean water is the key to human health
across Africa." The UN Environment Programme (UNEP), through its GEMS/Water
Programme, is responding to the call made by the international
community, last September, at the Johannesburg World Summit
on Sustainable Development, for "an integrated, multi-hazard,
inclusive approach to address vulnerability, risk assessment
and disaster management is an essential element of a safer
world in the 21st century." This new initiative will produce a comprehensive statistical
analysis of the state of water sources, the impact of extreme
events, and identify hotspots and emerging issues across the
African continent.
As a first step, the recently launched World Water Development
Report, produced by 23 UN agencies, including UNEP, for the
World Water Forum, provides the definitive report on the state
of the world's water, largely looking at water quantity, security
and access issues. The next step is to balance this information
with an equally comprehensive analysis of global water quality
issues.
With the GEMS/Water Programme coordinating, initiative partners
include the Pan-African START Secretariat, the International
Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, UNEP and the UN Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). All African
Governments are being invited to
participate. The final report will be presented at the Pan African Water
Conference to be held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in December
2003. Why the Focus on Africa?
Water resources and changes in the quantity and quality of
those resources are arguably the most important environmental
change issue of concern to Africa, particularly to the arid
and semi-arid regions of the continent. There is increasing
frequency of droughts, changes in land-use and urbanization,
and all these affect water resources and subsequently threaten
human well-being and economic development. It is becoming
increasingly difficult to meet water demand for agriculture,
industry and domestic consumption in many parts of Africa. Vulnerability is a set of conditions and processes resulting
from physical and other factors that increase the susceptibility
of a community to the effects of hazards. The new vulnerability
assessment will help to understand the combined effects of
different stresses acting upon regional water resources. The
result of the study will certainly provide the basis for identifying
pathways towards integrated water resources management and
thus, sustainable use and equitable allocation of water resources
in Africa. Drought is never just a meteorological problem. Lack of water
is often the result of mismanaged natural resources. In Africa,
drought is not a climate problem but a poverty-related problem.
It's a vicious circle. Global environmental and climactic
change will certainly exacerbate water problems. There is
strong seasonal and spatial variability of rainfall characterized
by major shifts in hydrological regimes in large parts of
the region. Human activities, like land-use and urbanization
are contributing to increasing water demand and water quality
deterioration. There is also the issue of ecosystems integrity
that is also being affected by lack of water at the river
basin scale. What does GEMS/Water do?
Since its establishment in 1977, the UNEP Global Environmental
Monitoring System (GEMS)/Water Programme has become internationally
renowned as the primary source for global water-quality data.
It is a multi-faceted water science programme oriented towards
knowledge development on freshwater quality issues throughout
the world. Major activities include monitoring, assessment
and capacity building. The twin goals of the programme are
to improve water quality monitoring and assessment capabilities
in participating countries and to determine the status and
trends of regional and global water quality. These goals are implemented through the GEMS/Water data bank,
including water-quality data from more than 100 countries,
with over two million entries for lakes, reservoirs, rivers
and groundwater systems. By compiling a global database, GEMS
adds value to country-level data by
creating global and regional water quality assessments. The
Programme also carries out assessments on a range of water
quality issues and methodologies. GEMS/Water data have been
used by other organizations, including the UN system and universities
around the world. Information on World Water Day 2003 can be found at www.waterday2003.org
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