What the UN system is doing - studies on national and regional hydrological agencies and services

UN Chronicle, Summer, 1997

Recent studies carried out by various United Nations agencies indicated that, in recent times, national hydrological services and agencies, particularly - but not only - in developing countries, were becoming less capable of assessing their respective water resources. Many national agencies have been facing reduction in observation networks and staffing at a time when water demand is rising rapidly and when the need for sustainable water resource use is becoming increasingly urgent. Steps are being taken to remedy those reductions. Several United Nations funding agencies are supporting initiatives being taken at the national and global levels. One example is the World Hydrological Cycle Observing System, whose overall objective is to contribute to the improvement of national and regional water resource assessment capabilities. The initiative is already under way in countries of the Mediterranean basin and southern Africa, and projects for other African regions and the Caribbean are in the pipeline. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in cooperation with the World Meteorological Organization and the International Geosphere/Biosphere Programme, is strengthening the operation of the Global Network for Isotopes in Precipitation (GNIP). GNIP has accumulated more than 220,000 items of data from 505 meteorological stations in some 80 countries. IAEA also assists countries in the management of water resources through the integration of isotope methods with other hydrological techniques. The assistance includes capacity-building and the implementation of water resource assessment programmes in member States. The need to strengthen hydrological networks is also being addressed in the United Nations System-wide Special Initiative on Africa.

The Joint World Health Organization/Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) Panel of Experts on Environmental Management for Vector Control has been promoting the application of environmental management for the control of disease vectors in agricultural development projects. It also prepares guideline documents, conducts national workshops and training courses, and supports country-level pilot and demonstration projects. A thorough international assessment of the risks to human health from exposure to microbial and chemical contaminants in drinking water was conducted after United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, and recommended guidelines were published in 1993. Health criteria and other support information were published in 1996. The guidelines provided the basis for introducing updated national drinking-water standards in many member States. Considerable progress has been made in the establishment of water-quality monitoring programmes worldwide, for many international river basins, such as the Danube, the Mekong, the Plate and the Nile, now covered by multilaterally agreed monitoring networks. Further, the global and regional monitoring efforts of UNEP's Global Environment Monitoring System/Water Programme provide water-quality data and information for both assessment and management purposes. The receipt of monitoring data from national water-quality laboratories and authorities also suggests that capacities have been improved in a number of countries.

There is need for Governments to enhance their water-quality monitoring and assessment programmes. Such efforts, at first glance, are expensive and time-consuming, with no immediate payoffs. Nevertheless, without such information, nations could easily make development decisions with costly, sometimes even catastrophic, consequences over the long term. For example, safeguarding and improving the quality of drinking water requires intensive backstopping of the national health, water and environmental authorities through advisory services, expert consultant services and intersectoral training programmes. This situation had a precedent in the 1960s, when recognition of an insufficient understanding by global hydrology for water resource management prompted proclamation by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) of the International Hydrological Decade, 1965-1974. That global programme, set up through United Nations inter-agency cooperation and underpinned by strong support at the national level in many countries, facilitated the establishment of a network of representative basins, improving understanding of hydrology and water resource management. In a cooperative effort by UNESCO, UNEP and the United Nations University, a comprehensive water-quality programme is being developed. It is to be based on a global network of representative drainage basins, encompassing the broad spectrum of environments, to allow future extrapolation to unmonitored basins.