World Water Day - GEMS/Water's 30th Birthday

BURLINGTON/NAIROBI, 20 March 2008 -- Today UNEPís GEMS/Water Programme
joins the international community in celebrating World Water Day. In
2008, the 30th anniversary of the Programme, the Day highlights
sanitation issues in accordance with the UNís observance of the
International Year of Sanitation.

In keeping with the sanitation theme, GEMS/Water is highlighting its
role in measuring the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) related to water and sanitation. This has included the
development of indicators and indices, such as the water quality
component of the 2008 Environmental Performance Index, launched at the
World Economic Forum in Davos in January.

World leaders who adopted the MDGs in 2000 envisioned halving the
proportion of people living without access to basic sanitation by the
year 2015. There are some 2.6 billion people presently worldwide without
proper sanitation facilities, some 40% of the worldís population. (For
more information on the International Year of Sanitation, see
http://www.sanitationyear2008.org)

To continue to make a valuable contribution to these international
efforts, GEMS/Water has recently embarked upon a ìVision for the Futureî
which includes:
∑ Continuing to diversify its database to meet the needs of water
authorities and decision-makers that have to deal with increasingly
complex and multifaceted water issues in this century. Improved data
coverage in turn provides a more comprehensive resource for indicator
development and assessments;
∑ Creating GEMSoft software as an automated data collection and
capacity building resource for all participating countries. Such a
resource can contribute to data integrity and comparability;
∑ Providing more sophisticated web-based services, such as statistical
and graphing packages, mapping and flux computation;
∑ Implementing more laboratory studies as a component of improving
standards, and a flagship component of quality assurance activities;
∑ Expanding interoperability with other online data sources to promote
data use by a broad decision-making community, including the UN Spatial
Data Infrastructure on Water. This positions water quality data and
information in a broader context, not only of Integrated Water Resource
Management (IWRM), but also climate change, and humanitarian
preparedness and response; and
∑ Strategically integrating GEMS/Water into the international water
agenda by developing partnerships with other organizations, particularly
universities.

GEMS/Water has also recently contributed to a new publication entitled
ìWater Voices from around the Worldî, which has submissions from 77
water celebrities and an introduction by former UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan (see http://www.watervoices.com).

Since 1978, GEMS/Water has been hosted at the National Water Research
Institute (NWRI) of Environment Canada in Burlington, Ontario. NWRI is
Canada's preeminent freshwater research facility. For more information
about NWRI, see http://www.nwri.ca.

What does GEMS/Water do?
Since its establishment in 1978, the Global Environmental Monitoring
Systemís Water Programme (GEMS/Water) of the UN Environment Programme
(UNEP) has become the primary source for global environmental water
quality data. It is a multi-faceted water science centre oriented
towards knowledge development on inland 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, at www.gemstat.org,
including water quality data and information from more than 3,000
stations in 100 countries, with over 4 million entries for lakes,
reservoirs, rivers and groundwater systems. By compiling a global
database, GEMS/Water adds value to country-level data by contributing to
global and regional water quality assessments.

Through its Quality Management System (QMS), UNEPís GEMS/Water Programme
improves global water quality data by ensuring the comparability and
validity of analyses performed by laboratories worldwide, and by
encouraging and supporting data integrity at all levels.

The Programme also carries out evaluations 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.

For more information about GEMS/Water, please contact: Dr. Richard D. Robarts, Director, tel: +1-306-975-6047 fax: +1-306-975-5143 e-mail: richard.robarts@gemswater.org or visit www.gemswater.org and www.gemstat.org.