Water Sector Indicators at World Water Week

Recognition of the importance of better indicators in the water sector is gaining momentum with two sessions at the World Water Week in Stockholm. UN-Water held a closed session with their Task Force on Indicators, Monitoring and Reporting to discuss the development of indicators at the international level to measure progress with international water development goals across the UN system. This is a very challenging task but it will add greatly to the value of the World Water Development Report and actions of the UN agencies if we are able to measure progress in a systematic way.

An open session was held on Indicators for Action: Reporting on Water Management. Presentations from UN-Water, the Danish Hydrological Institute and Cap-Net focused on the International, national and basin levels respectively. Most progress has been made at the basin level where indicators to measure progress with implementing IWRM are now being tested on the ground and used in capacity building. A round table discussion gave all participants the chance to engage with the subject.

Also in August a case study was being conducted by SWECO (supported by Sida and Cap-Net) on the application of IWRM in the Pungwe basin in Mozambique. Water managers used the indicators to assess their own progress in the implementation of IWRM approach which they rated at 30-40%. The conclusions were that the indicators were valuable, identified where they need to give more attention, and would be applied to two other basins under their responsibility.

The indicators can be downloaded from www.cap-net.org and a CD with a full set of training materials and supporting resources can be requested from Cap-Net, info@cap-net.org