A new report prepared by the Water Policy Group reveals the key issues to improving water outcomes globally from the perspectives of national water leaders.
Announced on November 29 at the World Water Congress of the International Water Resources Association in Daegu, Republic of Korea, the inaugural Global Water Policy Report 2021: Listening to National Water Leaders is the result of a comprehensive survey of top officials and other national water leaders in 88 countries.
NGWA Director of Science and Technology Bill Alley, Ph.D., was part of a groundwater expert group that lent time and experience to those creating the report.
Among the findings in the report are the following items.
- The highest water-related risks their countries face are from climate change and associated pressures on water supplies and worsening floods and droughts.
- The greatest challenges many face are with integration and prioritization of water issues within governments. Administrative problems of fragmented water institutions are of as much, if not greater, concern than factors such as public resistance to reforms.
- COVID-19 has not much affected the priority of water and sanitation services.
- Sustainable development goals on water are “challenging” or “impossible” for many with governance problems and lack of financing the main reasons for this.
- While groundwater is considered by many national water leaders to be essential to their country’s future water supply, far fewer consider their groundwater is being used sustainably.
Also, relating to groundwater, the report states, “National water leaders of the most surveyed countries identify the top three constraints and impediments to sound groundwater management as economic factors, cost, and complexity” and that the leaders “consider groundwater is not sufficiently integrated into national water management plans, and that laws and regulations governing groundwater are not being applied or enforced adequately.”
Click here to access the report.