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World Water Day: Shared Water - Shared Opportunities (10/03/09)

Greetings Everyone:

Perhaps you still have enough energy left after World Wetlands Day to think about celebrating the UN’s International World Water Day, held annually on 22 March to focus attention on the importance of freshwater and the need for sustainable management of freshwater resources? Celebrated since 1993, this year’s theme Shared Water - Shared Opportunities has significant resonance with Ramsar’s theme for 2009 Upstream-Downstream: wetlands connect us all. While we did not focus only on transboundary issues in river basins, it was one of the areas we considered in our WWD leaflet talking about upstream-downstream issues. Indeed you will see the same statistics on transboundary wetlands in both the Ramsar WWD leaflet (available here caxref:6241) as you will find in the World Water Day thematic paper (available from their web site here http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/flashindex.html - but be aware it is 14.5MB).

Their thematic paper looks at transboundary lakes and rivers and also at transboundary aquifers, an important inclusion since over 2 billion people depend on groundwater. The paper is worth a read, covering legal instruments (including the Ramsar Convention) that assist and support transboundary cooperation, joint monitoring and assessment, the fundamental importance of a participatory approach, financing issues, as well as taking a look at what the various UN agencies are doing in support of transboundary water cooperation. 

They have produced a number of other useful materials – posters, computer desktop wallpapers, a video, e-cards etc - in addition to the above thematic paper and these are all available for download from the above web address.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) leads the activities of this year’s World Water Day with the support of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

With best wishes, Sandra Hails, Ramsar Secretariat