Water for people.pdf - WHO Thailand Digital Repository

5 0 / S E T T I N G T H E S C E N ESigning Process: Indicators Mark the WayTable 3.4: continuedChallenge area Indicators used Future indicatorsEnsuring knowledge • Gross primary school enrolment • No. of water resource institutions(chapter 14) • Illiteracy rate • No. of water resource scientists• Density hydrological monitoring stations worldwide, by region • Newspaper circulation, per 1,000 inhabitants• Research and Development expenditure for selected countries • Water topics in school curriculum• Number of television sets and radio receivers per 1,000 people • Number of web sites with available water resource countries• Number of telephone lines per headinformation• Expenditure on ICT• Number of hydrological monitoring stations, by WorldMeteorological Organization (WMO) regionsGoverning wisely • Existence of institutions (water resources authorities) responsible • Water quality in rivers, lakes etc.(chapter 15) for management (including issuing abstraction and discharge • Numbers of instances when water service providers experience a rawlicences), which are independent of water users. Percentage of water shortageland area covered by such institutions. Number of water authorities • Existence of legislation advocating Dublin principlesand average area covered by each• Institutional strengthening and reform (post-1992)• Existence of water quality standards, for effluent discharges, • Defined roles of government (central and local)minimum river water quality targets• Existence of participatory framework and operational guidelines• Existence of defined water rights• Private sector involvement and stakeholders’ responsibilityestablished and implemented• Asset ownership properly defined• Financial commitment for IWRM adoptionThis list of indicators gives only major indicators used in the report. An appropriate database system is being developed under the guidance of the Data Advisory Committee. Similarly, efforts arealready underway to further develop ‘proto-indicators’.Observational Challenges forIndicator DevelopmentAfter decades of intensive experimental and modelling studies, ourunderstanding of hydrology at the local scale is arguably well inhand. In contrast, knowledge of the complex function of drainagebasins, especially in relation to anthropogenic challenges, is far lessdeveloped. The indicators developed for the WWDR must be able totrack the sources, transport, and fates of water as well aswaterborne constituents through large heterogeneous watersheds.On the one hand, there is the challenge of quantifying elements ofthe land-based hydrological cycle and moving progressively towardsthese larger scales; on the other hand, the dynamism associatedwith human-water interactions are all too often difficult tounderstand. The former has been the focus of major internationalobservational and scientific coordinating programmes (e.g. WMO-HYCOS, Coordinated Enhanced Observing Period [CEOP], Committeeon Earth Observation Satellites [CEOS], Global Terrestrial Network onHydrology [GTN-H], UNESCO-HELP [Hydrology, Environment, Life andPolicy]), but for the latter there are only a few monitoring systemsin place (CSD process through inputs from the United NationsAdministrative Committee on Coordination Subcommittee on WaterResources [UN ACC/SCWR] now reconstituted as UN-Water, GWP,World Water Council [WWC]). Similarly, while the deteriorating stateof current monitoring networks has been noted in the former case,a substantial build-up is also required to make them capable ofcapturing the system’s dynamism. In both, substantial improvementsare needed to overcome the observational challenges.Hydrologic information baseThe need for hydrologic information that can be used to developindicators has never been more timely. With the advent of highquality biophysical data sets, including those from remote sensingand operational weather forecasts, the scientific community israpidly approaching a situation in which the hydrological cycle canbe monitored over large regions and in near-real time. Paradoxically,the trend of reduction in stations that routinely monitorhydrographic variables may greatly limit the usefulness of theseemerging high technology tools, since they ultimately requirecalibration against known ground-based standards in order to provetheir reliability.Our ability to monitor the terrestrial water cycle using traditionaldischarge-gauging stations – the mainstay of water resourceassessment – continues to deteriorate rapidly across much of theworld. A time series plot (made in 1999 but little different today)