The UN’s World Water Day 2022 campaign “Groundwater: making the invisible visible” has wrapped up with a UN-Water Summit on Groundwater, highlighting the importance of better monitoring and management of the vital resource which accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth.
The 2022 campaign, which ran throughout 2022, wrapped up with the UN-Water Summit on Groundwater in Paris on 7-8 December, highlighting the importance of better monitoring and management of the vital resource which accounts for 99% of all liquid freshwater on Earth.
In March this year UNESCO’s United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), UN-Water’s flagship publication on water and sanitation issues, focussed on the theme of Groundwater: making the invisible visible. Globally, water use is projected to grow by roughly 1% per year over the next 30 years. Our overall dependence on groundwater is expected to rise as surface water availability becomes increasingly limited due to climate change.
Groundwater provides half of the volume of water withdrawn for domestic use by the global population, including the drinking water for many people in rural areas, and around 25% of all water used for irrigation.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) led the session at the Summit on Information and Data and the challenges of data collection, data quality, access and sharing of data were discussed.
WMO Secretary-General Prof. Petteri Taalas said in a video message to the Water Summit:
“Sustainable management of groundwater resources is critical to reduce the impacts of climate and weather-induced disaster risks like droughts on food security, economies, society and ecosystems,”
“Better hydrological monitoring and forecasting of the groundwater systems is critical to better understand and incorporate groundwater in Earth systems models and, consequently, develop climate-smart solutions and enhance climate change resilience and security.”
WMO’s first State of Global Water Resources report, published on 29th November, seeks to provide authoritative information which underpins management of global freshwater resources, including groundwater, in an era of growing demand and limited supplies.
WMO said that currently, 3.6 billion people face inadequate access to water at least a month per year and this is expected to increase to more than 5 billion by 2050. Between 2001 and 2018, UN-Water reported that 74% of all natural disasters were water-related.
This first edition of the report looks at streamflow – the volume of water flowing through a river channel at any given time. It also assesses terrestrial water storage - all water on the land surface and sub-surface and the cryosphere (frozen water).
The report also highlights the current lack of accessible verified hydrological data. WMO’s Unified Data Policy seeks to accelerate the availability and sharing of hydrological data, including river discharge and transboundary river basins information.
The information and accompanying maps contained in the report are largely based on modelled data (to achieve maximum geographical coverage) and remotely sensed information from NASA’s GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) mission for terrestrial water storage.
The Ground Water summit was co-coordinated by UNESCO and the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC), on behalf of UN-Water. Its main messages will be conveyed to the United Nations 2023 Water Conference next March.
The WMO Hydrological Observing System WHOS is one of a number of practical tools which supports modeling and warning systems of the whole hydrological system including groundwater.
nderstand the groundwater resources in its variability in space and time is critical for making sustainable groundwater management part of the solution to address the challenges posed by climate change and other environmental and societal changes.
Prof. Taalas continued:
“The important messages around data and information need to be brought and discussed at the UN 2023 Water Conference and carried to COP28 and other conferences in order to bring groundwater to where it belongs: To the centre of the debate on climate change processes – including climate change mitigation and adaptation, and also as a key factor for the achievement of SDG 6 on water and sanitation.”
“Such enablers are critical as climate change is affecting the availability, quality and quantity of water for billions of people and impact ecosystems in multiple ways. The hydrological changes induced by climate change are adding challenges to the sustainable management of all water resources, which are already under severe pressure in many regions of the world overextraction and pollution where more than 3 billion live in severely water stressed conditions. Groundwater resources are directly affected.”
Click here to download the WMO report STATE OF GLOBAL WATER RESOURCES 2021
Click here to download the UN report Groundwater: making the invisible visible
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