THE UNESCO'S INTERNATIONAL HYDROLOGICAL PROGRAMME (IHP VI 2002-2007):
WATER INTERACTIONS: SYSTEMS AT RISK AND SOCIAL CHALLENGES

Water Resources is a priority for UNESCO. Consequently, in the coming years UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme (IHP) will be placing much greater emphasis on societal, cultural and ethical aspects of water resources and will devote its attention to "Water Interactions: Systems at Risk and Social Challenges".

The increasing worldwide pressure on water resources under conditions of global change requires an aggressive integrated multidisciplinary approach to address the scientific and societal issues involving water resources. Hence, in defining the critical research components for 2002-2007, it became clear that what had hitherto been missing was a close investigation of water science and policy at the margins.

Therefore an integrated approach to water resources is the basic underlying concept of the IHP-VI programme. This requires that freshwater resources (including both surface water and groundwater) are handled as a whole in their assessment, development and management, with due consideration to inherent interactions. Aquifer systems are often the only source of fresh water in some regions of the world, particularly under arid and semi-arid climatic conditions where demand is rapidly increasing.

		Underground reserves are the main source of fresh water.

Since 1965, IHD/IHP has been the prominent UNESCO programme dealing with hydrogeology and groundwater resources at all levels. In the next six years, IHPVI will continue to devote particular attention to groundwater resources. Surface water - groundwater interactions will be studied by the Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy (HELP) programme designed to establish a global network of experimental catchments. HELP has been launched by UNESCO and WMO to understand the interactions existing at the interface of the hydrological processes, together with ecology, policy and society. Groundwater resources management will also be one of the concerns of the Regional Centres established at the end of 2001 under the auspices of UNESCO, one located in Cairo (Egypt) for Training and Water Studies of Arid and Semi-arid Zones, and the other in Teheran (Iran) for Urban Water Management.

Three new groundwater-related initiatives have been launched. The first is a project on International Shared Aquifer Resources Management (ISARM), which aims to improve the understanding of the environmental, socio-economic, and institutional components of the management of transboundary aquifer systems. The second initiative should create the conditions for the establishment of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) under the auspices of UNESCO and WMO. The Centre should act as a catalyst for stimulating and focussing Member States' efforts in groundwater data collection, monitoring and assessment. The third initiative will lead to the World-wide Hydrogeological Mapping and Assessment Project, which is being compiled for the Groundwater Resources Map of the World (WHYMAP).

The human dependency upon groundwater resources is intensifying. The World Water Vision Programme hosted by UNESCO alerted that in many countries food security in 2025 will depend on groundwater resources and most will depend on their sustainable management. Therefore there is the need to work "ALL of US" for the water security of our planet mostly depending on the rational management and protection of groundwater resources.