Workshop: Global Water Knowledge Synthesis and Assessment: 20 to 21 March 2017 Brisbane, Australia

Logos - Water Future and UNESCO WWAP

Despite more than a decade of substantial water-related research outcomes and assessment, we have no formal compendium of integrated and distilled knowledge—a synthesis of water research– to date that would comprehensively allow member states to rally around water issues, as they have around climate. However, with the emergence of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and with it renewed energy driving the global development agenda, we see it as timely to introduce a process that systematically harvests and then tests the value of this vast and continuously growing store of information within the policy and management domains.

UNESCO-WWAP and the Sustainable Water Future Programme (Water Future) are now partnering to jointly produce a synthesis of Global Freshwater-Related Knowledge, uniting two critical water communities: “knowledge generators” from the global water sciences and affiliated engineering fields and “knowledge  consumers and implementers” from water policy, planning and management. This will help to generate a comprehensive picture of the global water system and its relationship to human water resource systems, now and into the future.

Such knowledge generated though embedding scientific knowledge into the policy and management domains and integrate it within specific contexts and challenges that ultimately can produce effective and durable solutions to complex problems. We believe that this has the potential to develop into a single unifying water research output, around which nation states can rally in a similar manner to the IPCC assessments on climate change.

We are coordinating a preparatory dialogue though different workshops with all relevant stakeholders and leaders from the science, policy, and applications communities, with the aim of creating a framework for the production of  synthesis and water assessment with a high degree of legitimacy.

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