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World Water Assessment Programme

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The UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) was established in 2000 in response to a call from the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) to produce a UN system-wide periodic global overview of the status in terms of quantity and quality, use and management of freshwater resources.

WWAP actively coordinates the sustained efforts of a broad coalition of UN-Water members and various international partners. This collaboration is central to producing the World Water Development Report (WWDR), the UN-Water’s flagship report on water and sanitation issues. Released annually, the WWDR focuses on different strategic water issues each year, providing a comprehensive review of the global state of freshwater resources.

WWAP also developed a comprehensive gender component with concrete achievements, namely, the development of Toolkit on Sex-disaggregated Water Data and the Call for Action Initiative supported by a Multi-Stakeholder Coalition composed of Member State institutions, UN agencies, international and regional organizations, Official Development Assistance (ODA) agencies, and civil society.[1]

Background

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In 1998, during the Sixth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), the need for regular, global assessments of freshwater resources was highlighted. In response to this call, what is now known as UN-Water (then the ACC Subcommittee on Water Resources) took the decision to produce a UN system-wide periodic global overview of the status, use and management of freshwater resources. Recognizing the importance for the report to have a multi-stakeholder dimension, it was decided that it would be a United Nations report in cooperation with other stakeholders. The World Water Assessment Programme was established in 2000 to coordinate the production of the Report. The first WWDR was launched on 22 March 2003.

Until 2012, the WWDR was produced and released every three years. In 2012, as a result of a Global Stakeholder Survey in which stakeholders called for change in terms of focus and periodicity, UN-Water Members decided to change the WWDR into an annual production with a thematic focus on specific strategic water issues.

Initially funded by the Japanese Government and hosted at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris from its inception in 2000 through 2006, WWAP, a purely extra-budgetary programme, is funded by the Government of Italy and hosted by the Regione Umbria at the UNESCO Programme Office for Global Water Assessment in Perugia, Italy, since 2007.

WWAP, initially through the WWDR series, underlined the importance of gender equality in water domain for Sustainable Development. To add more substance and depth to the gender related discussion, UNESCO WWAP led a special working group that highlighted the substantial and persistent gender inequalities in water access, management, and governance. These inequalities are significant barriers to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In line with the alarming findings of this working group and aligned with UNESCO’s Gender Equality Priority, WWAP developed its full-fledged programme on gender.[1]

Mission and Objectives

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UNESCO WWAP aims to equip water managers and policy- and decision-makers with knowledge, tools and skills necessary to formulate and implement sustainable water policies.

The mandate of the programme, in fostering global processes to achieve water security and sustainability, is defined by a number of Strategic Objectives:

  • Producing the WWDR series on the global situation with regard to water availability (both in terms of quantity and quality) and its uses, and on the likely future changes of water availability and use in relation to global drivers, in order to provide early warning to avoid potential water related conflicts;
  • Helping Member States to assess their water resources and the efficiency and effectiveness of their water policy decisions and programmes,
  • Assisting Member States to build and improve their capacities to collect and analyze data of relevance to their water policy initiatives;
  • Developing conceptual and methodological frameworks for internationally comparable data and indicators for water resources;
  • Analyzing data in partnership with policy-makers and researchers, and promoting wider and more informed use of data for policy purposes at different scales;
  • Disseminating WWAP messages and results by producing various means of effective communication tools and public education material; and
  • Developing regional, sub-regional and national case studies and best practices as well as regional water development reports underpinned with regional data sets.[2]

Activities

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Line of actions

In accordance with its strategic objectives, WWAP’s activities revolve around three lines of actions:

  • Provide fact-based knowledge to achieve water-related objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;
  • Help implement integrated water resources management and effective governance through capacity development and policy dialogues;
  • Support measuring gender equality and women empowerment acceleration in water management and governance through ad-hoc gender-responsive indicators and sex-disaggregated water data.[2]

1. United Nations World Water Development Report (UN WWDR)

The UN-Water’s flagship report on water and sanitation issues, launched each year the 22 March on the UN World Water Day. Since 2014, the World Water Development Report (WWDR) has been an annual, thematic publication, focusing each year on a different strategic issue. Prior to 2014, the reports were produced every three years and took a comprehensive approach.

WWAP coordinates with all UN agencies and international academic institutions to prepare the report, which each year focuses on a different aspect of water resources. The report provides policy recommendations to decision-makers by offering the most updated knowledge available, in-depth analyses, and best practices.[3][4]

2. Capacity Development

WWAP strengthens the policy-science interface and supports decision-making on water through targeted capacity reinforcement and knowledge sharing initiatives. Trainings focus on water and gender, and on the themes of the World Water Development Reports.

Water and Climate Change training program

WWAP in collaboration with UNESCO Cairo Office conducted regional training on ‘Water and Climate Change’. The online training that took place on March 2021 was attended by the participants from 17 States from the Arab Region (Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, Kuwait, Oman, UAE Yemen, Qatar, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Iraq, and Syria).

Nature-based solutions training program

This national training in Lebanon was designed to provide an overall understanding of what nature-based solutions (NBS) are, and how they enhance water availability, improve water quality and reduce risks associated with water-related disasters and climate change. The participants were representatives of relevant Ministries, Universities, research institutes, natural reserves and non-governmental organizations.

Wastewater training program

WWAP, in collaboration with UNESCO Cairo Office, organized in-person training in Cairo, Egypt to share innovative and successful approaches on improved wastewater management which generates social, environmental and economic benefits essential for sustainable development and to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

A second training took place in Accra, Ghana that focused on Effective Management of Water Quality and Emerging Pollutants in Water and Wastewater in Sub-Saharan Africa, and was organized in collaboration with the International Initiative on Water Quality (IIWQ) and the Regional Centre for Integrated River basin Management (RC-IRBM).

3. Water and Gender

Aligned with UNESCO’s Gender Equality Priority, WWAP is focusing on increasing gender equality in the water sector to fill data gaps and implement concrete actions. Achieving gender equality in the water domain is crucial for the accomplishment of standing international gender- and water-related commitments, including those enshrined in the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development - in particular, SDG 5 (gender equality) and SDG 6 (water and sanitation for all).

Within the framework of UNESCO's Priority Gender Equality Action Plan, UNESCO WWAP is working on "Water and Gender Equality" along four axes:

  • Indicators, methodology and tools on water and gender
  • Capacity development
  • Field projects
  • Communication and advocacy
Call for Action

WWAP coordinates a Call for Action together with a Multi-stakeholder Coalition composed by Member States’ institutions, UN agencies, international and regional organizations, NGOs, private sector and civil society. The Call for Action, launched in 2021, aims to catalyze concrete action through advocacy, policy, gender-equal funding, and the development of innovative methods, approaches and tools.

The Call for Action Initiative was presented at major events, among others: African Water Forum (November 2021), Asian World Water Week (February 2022), Dushanbe Water Action Decade Conference (June 2022), High-Level Political Forum (July 2022), World Water Week (August 2022, 2023, 2024), Korea International Water Week (November 2022), UN 2023 Water Conference in New York (March 2023), where the Call for Action and the voluntary commitments by its Multi-Stakeholder Coalition were listed as official commitment under the Water Action Agenda; World Water Forum in Bali (May 2024).

The Dushanbe Declaration of June 2022, issued at the second Water Action Decade Conference, called for the closure of gender data gaps. It emphasized the need for enhanced provision and accessibility of gender-disaggregated data, which is crucial for informed decision-making and promoting gender equality in the water sector. This Declaration also noted favorably Call for Action to accelerate gender equality in water management practices.

UNESCO-WWAP Gender Disaggregated Water Data Toolkit

UNESCO-WWAP Gender Disaggregated Water Data Toolkit was designed and published in 2015 and the second edition was redesigned in 2019 to incorporate SDG 5, SDG 6 and other Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda.

The Toolkit was developed to help collect relevant quantitative and qualitative data on water and gender, useful to inform water policy and planning. to help decision makers adopt data-driven and gender-transformative water policies and make concrete changes to advance gender equality in water and meet the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

  • Tool 1: Gender-responsive indicators for water assessment, monitoring and reporting
  • Tool 2: Methodology for the collection of sex-disaggregated water data
  • Tool 3: Guidelines on the collection of sex-disaggregated water data
  • Tool 4: Questionnaire for the collection of sex-disaggregated water data
SDG 6 Synthesis Report

In 2015, UN Member States adopted the 2030 Agenda, setting universal and transformative goals and targets. To present the overview of progress in water domain, the ‘SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2018 on Water and Sanitation’ was produced by a UN-Water Task Force including 13 UN Agencies coordinated by WWAP. The SDG 6 Synthesis Report 2018 provides an overview of the status of implementation at the global and regional levels, outlining ways to accelerate progress towards this goal, as well as some comprehensive information about how SDG 6 is interlinked to other SDG targets and indicators.

Publications

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