Protecting international waters

International waters, whether inland (surface or groundwaters) or marine, may be shared by several countries or belong to none at all.

The integrity of their resources is under threat from urban, industrial and agricultural pollution, over-exploitation and soil erosion. To make matters worse, international waters are rarely managed under joint agreements, which is a contributing factor to political instability in the countries or regions concerned.

Given that 85% of wastewaters worldwide are released with no treatment whatsoever and that 50% of the world's population is expected to live in regions without access to freshwater by 2025, management of freshwater resources has become one of humanity’s major challenges for the century to come.

Although no international convention on international waters exists that could form the basis for a shared vision of objectives and the means required to achieve them, international cooperation programmes are devoting a substantial part of their resources to this topic. While activities concerning international waters have to be considered at regional and local levels, water is a global issue that needs to be addressed at international level.

This is what the FGEF is hoping to achieve through its efforts towards better management of international waters.
 

The FGEF's objective is to contribute to better management of international waters by supporting projects with a strong emphasis on:

• Substantial collaboration between states,
• Strengthening measurement networks and monitoring systems,
• Reducing pollution at source.

FGEF interventions address six levels of management:

• Management of national and international hydrosystems (integrated water resource management and protection of shared aquifers);
• Management of catchment basins (to reduce soil erosion and siltation, biodiversity losses, water turbidity and the proliferation of invasive species);
• Management of marine pollution (prevention of waste disposal in water bodies, wastewater treatment);
• Coastal zone management (managing human pressures from urban growth and industrial and tourism development);
• Fisheries management (promoting sustainable fishing) ;
• Management of the open sea (defining governance procedures in the absence of an international convention for ecosystem protection in the open sea).
   

• By 2025, household water consumption will increase by about 40% and consumption for irrigation, which accounts for 70% of all water abstraction, by 20%;
• Half of all the world’s wetlands have been lost since the start of the 20th century;
• Half of all freshwater biodiversity has been lost;
• 2 people out of 5 depend on water bodies that are shared by several countries;
• 15% of the world's countries receive more than 50% of their water from other countries upstream.

Source: world report on "Water in a Changing World" presented by UNESCO’s Director General in his introductory speech at the Istanbul forum.