Water Monitoring
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Based inter alia on a UN-Water Report on Existing Global Systems & Initiatives for Water Monitoring (Aug 2006), this article aims at mapping relevant UN and external data- and knowledge-bases, web portals and other on-line resources supporting the monitoring of water usage, quality and relevant related aspects.
In the spirit of WaterWiki, this article is created for complementation or amendment/updating of the provided information as adequate; your help in making this article more comprehensive, accurate, updated is most welcome!
Background
Monitoring in the mandate of UN-Water
The purpose of monitoring
Monitoring internationally agreed goals and targets
Monitoring the Millennium Development Goals
Monitoring the implementation of the JPOI and Agenda 21
The call on UN-Water to monitor and report on implementations of CSD-13
UN-SD Initiative the System of integrated Environmental and Economic accounting, (SEEA)
Definitions
A map of global monitoring initiatives
(Original source: UN-Water: Water Monitoring - Mapping Existing Global Systems & Initiatives (Aug 2006))
On-line databases and resources
UN websites
- GEMStat (WaterWiki synopsis)
- UN Platform (hosted by UNEP) to share surface and ground water data sets collected from the GEMS/Water Global Network (>3,000 stations, > 100 parameters; more...)
- OpenWater (GEMS Water / UNEP)
- "a Wiki that provides a platform for water quality scientists, researchers and practitioners to discuss analytical methods..." (more...)
Other websites
- Crop Explorer
- A US Department of Agriculture website providing hydro-meteorological data (i.a. in real-time).
- CAREWIB Water info portal (direct link
- Water data "storehouse" and portal for Central Asia with Database, Links and other features. Pulling together i.a. water-relevant data from ICWC, IFAS and other partners.
- The Portal was created within the framework of the Central Asia Regional Water Information Base (CAREWIB) Project funded by the Swiss Agency for the Development and Cooperation and being implemented by SIC ICWC jointly with the UNECE and UNEP/GRID-Arendal.
Points for further discussion
The following points have their origin in an analysis of the systems which have been screened by the UN-Water report "Water Monitoring". It is neither comprehensive, nor can it be fully objective and exact. Therefore, they must be considered as a starting point and an opportunity for discussion rather than a definitive judgement on the different initiatives.
1. By nature, most of the global water databases
and monitoring systems currently maintained by
the various UN agencies and programmes contain
secondary data; in other words the organisations
concerned do not collect the data themselves, but
compile and disseminate data retrieved from sources
that directly collect data (primary databases).
Country-level data is mostly drawn from national
sources (that have to be supported to strengthen
their outputs) and the main role of the different
UN agencies is to compile them and provide global
estimate relevant to their respective mandate.
2. In several cases, however, UN agencies or other
institutions maintain information systems based
uniquely on tertiary data already collected from
international sources. While the added value of
compiling tertiary data from different international
sources may be justified by the need to serve a specific
purpose or reach a broader audience, it bring
a problem of synchronicity of update, and sometimes
of intellectual property and visibility. There
are indeed a relatively small number of “primary
international datasets” within the UN system and
its among partners. One possible role of UN-Water
would be to serve as clearing house, identifying and
attributing of primary responsibility to a single
institution or programme for each dataset, thus
reducing duplication, avoiding inconsistencies, and
streamlining resources. Allocation of a given responsibility
could be associated with a set of conditions
to be fulfilled to guarantee the quality of the dataset.
3. Water-related targets of the Millenium Development
Goals are adequately covered by the WHOUNICEF
Joint Monitoring programme which reports
regularly on water supply and sanitation. The JMP
is also the only comprehensive global monitoring
system which includes field surveys and does not
Main findings and points for discussion
rely only on secondary information.
4. However, the fact that water does not appear
anywhere else in the MDG than under the WSS
banner is striking, while it has been demonstrated
that water plays a role in practically all the MDG.
In particular, Target 9 of MDG 7 Integrate the
principles of sustainable development into country
policies and programmes and reverse the loss of
environmental resources should include a waterrelated
indicator. UN-Water may want to negotiate
with DESA to consider inclusion of a water indicator
in the MDG monitoring process.
5. With regard to CSD and the JPOI, several independent
initiatives have flourished in the last years, at
global, regional and local levels. GWP, UNDP, Japan
Water Forum and UNEP-UCC regional initiatives
have developed a capacity to monitor the adoption
of IWRM plans. UN-Water’s role would be provide a
formal framework for the development of an
agreed methodology to monitor IWRM plans
and their implementation.
6. The role of UN-Water in CSD is also to better interact
with UNSD in the definition of water-related
indicators of sustainable development. In particular,
UN-Water should investigate further the possibility
to develop a Sustainable water development
index.
7. Generally speaking, information on water quantity
seem to be more widely available than
water quality data, in terms of countries coverage.
The main cause for this might be that quantities
are easier to assess and monitor than quality. A
lot remain to be done to obtain a good coverage of
world-wide water quality monitoring. GEMS water
provides a good platform for further development
of global water quality monitoring but it may need
to reconsider its approach.
8. Several major monitoring programmes suffer from
irregular updating which affect their timely and
regular reporting capacity.
9. Some monitoring systems are not easily accessible
and poorly described and therefore probably of little
use for the international community.
10. Data quality is and remains a major issue in assessing
the reliability of monitoring systems. While
heterogeneity in the quality of data is intrinsically
related to the nature of the data collection process,
which relies in most cases on country capacities to
collect and handle information, the development of
metadata, careful cross-checking of information and
systematic description of some standard assessment
of quality level can greatly increase understanding
about the reliability of information. The UN Statistics
group is developing quality control and reporting
procedures appropriate to country compilations
which should be systematically used for waterrelated
data.
11. There is tremendous scope for better structuring
of information among the different systems,
with large potential benefits for the users of the
information. A potential area of improvement is
related to innovative cost-effective IT and communication
and dissemination solutions. The idea of a
Federated Water Monitoring System (FWMS),
a web services based UN–Water corporate information
system, is described in details in Annex. The
approach suggested is that, making use of the latest
available technology, while having a single point of
entry (portal), the UN–Water corporate information
system datasets will stay resident at their respective
domain lead Agency, and evocated and combined
on internet for dissemination at a user request.
Such a solution, other than being of great impact
on timeliness since data recalled will be always the
last update, may permit saving of resources actually
dedicated to replication of secondary data and
permit the federation partners to concentrate on
their core activity. It will also contribute to enhancing
the coherence and comparability among existing
systems.
12. While the amount of information available is impressive,
key information is still missing to get a full
coverage of the water sector. Water productivity
is not available in a systematic way. Gender-related
information, for instance time spent by women and
girls to fetch water in cities and rural areas don’t
seem to be readily available. Information on wastewater
production and treatment is still anecdotal,
and very little information is available on the role of
civil society. Disputes, a rapidly growing concern,
are not reported in a systematic way, except in the
case of transboundary waters. Global monitoring
of groundwater drawdown remains a problem,
in particular in conceptual terms (how to represent
them). UN-Water may seek to identify major gaps in
global water information and focus attention and
resources on the development of additional monitoring
capacities.
13. Logically, country-based information dominates in
existing water-related monitoring systems. However,
the need exists to start developing information by
river basin. WRI has made considerable efforts in
that sense with the development of its database
Watersheds of the world which could serve as
a framework for the development on a basin-level
monitoring capacity.
14. Impressive progresses were made recently in the
development of global spatial information
through GIS. While data quality remains an issue for
several of these datasets, the development of common
open-sources platforms, like Geonetwork,
are an excellent example of successful inter-agency
collaboration.
15. The number of initiatives classified as Reporting
or Assessment is impressive and growing. While
this is probably unavoidable, in view of the different
target audiences of each of these initiatives, it
should be reminded that all these programmes rely
on information collected by the monitoring programmes.
In some cases, the usefulness and justification
for some programmes relying only on other
international sources for their global information is
questionable.
16. During the mapping exercise it has been observed
that the most of the data used to compile indicators
is collected at national level (i.e. from national
public administration bodies such as Ministries of
Agriculture, Environment, Water or National Statistics
Institutes) and it seems that this tendency
will be reinforced in the years to come. The need
to reinforce country capacities in setting up performing
monitoring systems must be reiterated. In
parallel with the development and improvement
of global monitoring systems to satisfy the needs
of the international community, UN-Water must
work towards strengthening national capacity
to collect water data, especially for developing
countries and countries with economies in transition.
1 This includes the development and dissemination
of standard methodologies, best practises,
starting with updated basic classification, definitions
and glossaries though all possible means, including
regional workshops, training courses, ad-hoc consultancies,
and internet.
17. Related to this point is the formulation of water initiatives
fundraising campaign to support this institutional
building at global and local level. UN-Water
should promote programmes aimed at enhancing
country capacity in the long path towards water
data production, self reliance and sustainability. A
future tendency could be that critical information
(required to compile higher level indicators) organized
in domains could be collected only once (i.e.
in a single survey) at the source (country level) and
be available, after processing, in the required format
everywhere else for domain analysis purposes at
national and global level for many secondary processing
users.
MAIN LESSONS
Further Readings, References, Links
Source(s)
DESCRIBE/LINK SOURCE(S) OF INFORMATION/LESSONS HERE
