World Water Assessment Programme

The United Nations World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is a UNESCO programme which was founded to compile periodic assessments and analyses of water resources availability and present a global picture of the state of freshwater resources and major challenges. Simply stated it is charged with monitoring the world’s freshwater resources. Thereby WWAP provides recommendations and capacity-training programmes with as goal to enhance assessment capacity at a national and regional level and to inform the decision-making process and resulting policies. Founded in 2000, it is the flagship programme of UN-Water.

Its primary product, the UN World Water Development Report, is a periodic UN-Water flagship report which accounts as the most comprehensive Report of UNESCO on freshwater resources. It provides an authoritative picture of the state of the world’s freshwater resources.

In 1998, the Sixth Session of the Commission on Sustainable Development stated that there was a need for regular, global assessments on the status of freshwater resources. In response to this recommendation, the member organizations of UN-Water (known then as the ACC Subcommittee on Water Resources) decided to undertake a collective UN system-wide continuing assessment process. Founded in 2000, the flagship programme of UN-Water, the World Water Assessment Programme coordinates the production of the UN World Water Development Report (WWDR), with as aim to report on the status of global freshwater resources and the progress achieved in reaching the Millennium Development Goals and currently also the new set of Sustainable Development Goals related to water. Initially the periodicity and coverage of the Report was triennial and comprehensive, but in 2012, UN Water changed this for it to have an annual periodicity and being theme oriented (plus an additional synthesis report every five years) with as purpose to sharpen the focus of the Report on strategic water issues and become more topical. The first annual edition was published in March 2014 (Theme: Water and Energy) followed by the 2015 edition (Theme: Water for a Sustainable World). The WWDR 2016 (Theme: Water and Jobs) was launched on 22 March 2016 in Geneva during the official World Water Day celebrations held in ILO Headquarters.

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