International Recommendations for Water Statistics.

 

1. Water is essential for life. It is a key element in ensuring the integrity of ecosystems and the goods and services they provide as well as in growing food, generating energy and producing all kinds of products and services. The growth of population, together with increasing competition for freshwater among agriculture, urban and industrial uses, results in unprecedented pressures on water resources, with many countries reaching conditions of water scarcity and facing limits to economic development. Moreover, water quality continues to decline, further limiting the availability of freshwater resources, and there is change in the global hydrological cycle due to human pressures.

2. The integral role of water in development is widely recognized, and water issues are very high in the national and international development agendas, with several international agreements specifying targets for water supply and sanitation. At the global level, the most notable are the targets in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), namely, target 7.C, to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation, and the two related indicators: proportion of population using an improved water source, and proportion of population using an improved sanitation facility (indicators 7.8 and 7.9, respectively).2 The vital role of water is reflected also by the recent inclusion of a new indicator under target 7.A, the proportion of total water resources used (indicator 7.5), whose purpose is to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources. 

3. At the regional level, the European Union has established a community framework for water protection and management. By means of the European Union Water Framework Directive, the European Union provides for the management of inland water resources in order to prevent and reduce pollution, promote sustainable water use, protect the aquatic environment, improve the status of aquatic ecosystems and mitigate the effects of floods and droughts. The water framework directive also introduces the principles of cost recovery and polluter pays to achieve a common target value of good ecological status for all European water bodies by 2015 in the most cost-effective way, taking into account an economic analysis of water services and natural resources, including environmental costs. 

4. Integrated water resources management (IWRM) and the assessment and monitoring of water resources and their use call for improved water statistics that are based on consistent concepts, definitions and terminology and are better integrated with economic, social and environmental statistics.

Read the full recommendations for Water Statistics.