Water and climate change

The UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) recognizes the valuable contributions of FAO, SIWI, UNDP, UNESCO-IHP, UN-Habitat, UNIDO, UNU-INWEH, WHO, WMO and the World Bank whose inputs as chapter lead agencies made the content preparation of this report possible. Sincere appreciation goes to the GWP, ODI, the UN Regional Commissions (UNECA, UNECE, UNECLAC, UNESCAP and UNESCWA) and the UNESCO Office in Nairobi for co-leading Chapter 10 on regional perspectives. We also would like to thank those UN-Water members and partners and all other organizations and individuals who provided useful contributions and comments throughout the production process.Climate change affects – and is affected by – global water resources. It reduces the predictability of water availability and affects water quality. Climate change also increases the occurrence of extreme weather events, threatening sustainable social-economic development and biodiversity worldwide. This, in turn, has profound implications for water resources. As such, climate change exacerbates the ever-growing challenges associated with the sustainable management of water. Conversely, the way water is managed influences the drivers of climate change. Water, therefore, is the ultimate connector in the global commitments towards a sustainable future: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are highly dependent on improved water management. Within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, adopted by UN Member States in March, 2015, water management is essential for reducing the occurrence and impacts of water-related disasters, which have the largest effect on society and people’s livelihoods. And the implementation of the Paris Agreement is dependent on improved management of water resources. This is clearly acknowledged in many countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Adaptation initiatives related to water, for example, have been included as a first priority in many NDCs. The 2020 edition of the UN World Water Development Report addresses the critical linkages between water and climate change in the context of sustainable development. It also serves as a guide for concrete actions to address these challenges. It outlines actions, supported by examples from across the world, in three areas: first, enabling people to adapt to the impacts of climate change; second, improving the resilience of livelihoods; and, third, reducing the drivers of climate change. Critically, measures to improve the efficiency of water use in agriculture - while at the same time ensuring water access for vulnerable groups such as smallholder farmers - is inextricably linked to multiple SDGs. These include those related to zero hunger (SDG 2), availability and access to water (SDG 6), climate action (SDG 13), and promoting the sustainable use of ecosystem services (SDG 15). The Report concludes that reducing both the impacts and drivers of climate change will require substantial changes in the way we use and reuse the Earth’s limited water resources. The experience and expertise needed to achieve this goal are brought together in the Report through UN-Water’s Members and Partners. I would like to thank them all for the development of this flagship publication. I am grateful to UNESCO and its World Water Assessment Programme for coordinating the production of this report. I am confident that it will support policy makers in tackling the challenges of climate change by harnessing the wide-ranging opportunities that improved water management offers for adaptation, mitigation and resilience in a rapidly changing world.The financial contribution from the Italian GovernmentPrologue: The state of water resources in the context of climate change Chapter 1. Climate change, water and sustainable development Chapter 2. International policy frameworks Chapter 3. Water availability, infrastructure and ecosystems Chapter 4. Water-related extremes and risk management Chapter 5. Human health impacts related to water, sanitation and climate change Chapter 6. Agriculture and food security Chapter 7. Energy and industry Chapter 8. Human settlements Chapter 9. Water-climate-energy-food-environment nexus Chapter 10. Regional perspectives Chapter 11. Water governance for resilience to climate change Chapter 12. Climate finance: financial end economic considerations Chapter 13. Technological innovation and citizen knowledge Chapter 14. Moving forwar

The Dialogue Among Peoples: The Rabat Commitment

This document contains the recent declaration adopted during the “Conference on Fostering Dialogue among Cultures and Civilizations through Concrete and Sustained Initiatives” held in Rabat, Morocco from 14 to 16 June 2005. This international conference was convened by six co-sponsoring organizations: UNESCO, OIC, ISESCO, ALECSO, the Danish Centre for Culture and Development and the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures, and with the participation of the Council of Europe as observer. It is of note that this event represents a unique international partnership initiative

Women's participation in international meetings : a statistical survey of women's representation at ESCAP meetings

The World Plan of Action for the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Women&rsquo;s Year 1975 clearly diagnosed the problems concerning the participation of women in national politics as follows:&nbsp;&ldquo;... the participation of women as agents of national and international economic, social and political change is fundamental in the sense that the women has a specific role to play, and ... the recognition of this partici&shy; pation is not a gratuitous concession on the part of the international community but an act of justice owed to women by virtue of their valuable contribution to the development of humanity throughout history.&rdquo; The Conference recommended periodic reporting by the commissions and institutions of high-level national mechanisms on the national progress made with respect to women&rsquo;s participation in all aspects of social activities and to the progress made towards achieving equality of women at the national and international levels. Participation of women in politics, the diplomatic service and other decision-making levels in national governments is a major indicator of women&rsquo;s status in society, as well as a tool to advance their status in domestic and inter&shy; national contexts. Yet these are the sectors, in many countries in the Asian and Pacific region, where least development was registered in the last decade despite the adoption of constitutional and other legislative provisions aimed at achieving equality for women. This survey of female representation at ESCAP meetings provides a case&shy;study of these hypotheses. The timing is important; the period 1979-1983 falls within the decade when some progress might have been expected to occur. Further the nature of ESCAP meetings, covering both economic and social aspects across a very wide range of topics, should give some indication of sectoral variation and change in representation.&nbsp;</p

Recomendação para a Protecção e Preservação de Imagens em movimento

Tradução, pelo Grupo de Trabalho de Arquivos Audiovisuais da BAD, do documento "Recomendação para a Protecção e Preservação de Imagens em movimento" apresentado na Conferência Geral da UNESCO, no encontro de Belgrado, de 23 a 28 de Outubro de 1980, na sua 21ª sessão

Pairwise Comparison Method Toolkit. A toolkit for countries to measure global learning outcomes.

This toolkit has been co-authored by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Centre at the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics (UIS). ACER provides technical support to UIS, which has been mandated to monitor the progress of countries towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) in education to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (United Nations, 2021). The GEM Centre sponsors and contributes to public goods and activities that facilitate education systems reporting against SDG 4 in a globally consistent way. Consistent and high-quality monitoring of student learning will help systems understand the strengths they have and the challenges they face. Moreover, it provides evidence to inform the development of policies and practice to improve student learning. This toolkit has been developed to help support countries to align their assessment with global standards and report against SDG 4.1. UIS has developed a menu of options to enable countries to report against SDG 4.1.1, of which the Pairwise Comparison Method (PCM) for measuring global learning outcomes is one. Where appropriate, and to support consistency, some content of this PCM toolkit is based on one of the other options for countries, the Policy Linking Toolkit (PLT)

IOTWS Operations and Limitations

This document provides a description of the real-time monitoring and alerting activities of the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWS), considered in the context of the other actions which are required for effective warning and mitigation of tsunamis. These other activities, such as emergency response, planning, education and risk assessment are generally the responsibility of national and local authorities, and will be most effective when carried out with awareness of the capabilities and limitations of the international tsunami service providers. The Regional Tsunami Service Providers (RTSPs) of the IOTWS have been fully operational since 31 March 2013, but have been developing and testing their capabilities since 2009. They now provide an advanced tsunami forecasting service based on earthquake detection, sea-level measurements and oceanographic modeling, which includes detailed threat information for almost 800 coastal zones around the Indian Ocean. The three centres currently acting as RTSPs each cover the whole area of responsibility of the Indian Ocean and have aligned their coastal forecast zones, accuracy and timeliness targets, and output product formats to ensure that National Tsunami Warning Centres (NTWCs) can readily use the forecasts from any or all of the RTSPs. The tsunami models used by the RTSPs are similar but differ in their detailed configurations. This leads to some differences, generally small, in the forecasts produced by the centres, so it is important that NTWCs understand the basis for the forecasts and the significance of any differences. The RTSP products include tsunami arrival and cessation times and maximum wave amplitudes for all threatened coastal zones, and so can be rather complex. Some of the issues involved in interpreting the products are discussed here, including the potential to use modeled tsunami forecasts to improve risk assessment for local areas. Although the real-time operation of the IOTWS is working well, there are several limitations and areas of potential improvement, most of which are currently being addressed. Several of the current limitations are discussed here.</p

Women in contemporary cancer research

Despite recent advances, gender inequality persists in many scientific fields, including medicine. Thus far, no study has extensively analyzed the gender composition of contemporary researchers in the oncology field. We examined 40 oncological journals (Web of Science, ONCOLOGY category) with different impact factors (Q1-Q4) and extracted all the articles and reviews published during 2015 17, in order to identify the gender of their authors. Our data showed that women represent about 38% of all the authorships, both in articles and reviews. In relative terms, women are overrepresented as first authors of articles (43.8%), and clearly underrepresented as last or senior authors (<30%). This double pattern, also observed in other medical fields, suggests that age, or more specifically, seniority, may play some role in the gender composition of cancer researchers. Examining the pattern of collaboration, an interesting finding was observed: the articles signed by a woman in the first or in the last position roughly showed gender parity in the byline. We found also some differences in the content of the articles depending on which gender occupies the first and last positions of the authorships

Education and Disaster Vulnerability in Southeast Asia: Evidence and Policy Implications

This article summarizes the growing theoretical and empirical literature on the impact of education on disaster vulnerability with a focus on Southeast Asia. Education and learning can take place in different environments in more or less formalized ways. They can influence disaster vulnerability as the capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and recover from natural hazard in direct and indirect ways. Directly, through education and learning, individuals acquire knowledge, abilities, skills and perceptions that allow them to effectively prepare for and cope with the consequences of disaster shocks. Indirectly, education gives individuals and households access to material, informational and social resources, which can help reducing disaster vulnerability. We highlight central concepts and terminologies and discuss the different theoretical mechanisms through which education may have an impact. Supportive empirical evidence is presented and discussed with a particular focus on the role of inclusiveness in education and challenges in achieving universal access to high-quality education. Based on situation analysis and best practice cases, policy implications are derived that can inform the design and implementation of education and learning-based disaster risk reduction efforts in the region

Handbook for literacy and post-literacy for capacity-building of organizations : for managers and trainers

The objective of this publication is to provide information to assist trainers and managers of literacy organizations to develop and implement effective literacy and post-literacy programmes

Global alarm : dust and sandstorms from the world's drylands

This collection of essays and case studies are presented to analyse factors contributing to dust and sandstorms with examples of measures to keep the menace under control. It considers the relationship between weather, climate and dust storms and examines the mechanisms by which dust and sand are transported. Experiences show that past policies on land-use and the promotion of unsustainable farming systems were the root cause of most disasters. The socio-economic aspects of dryland degradation need to be given more attention. Success stories on effective measures in mitigating the effects of sand-dust storms are reviewed. Progress in finding suitable indicators and monitoring systems to forecast, mitigate and prevent dust storms are featured. Produced and supported by: the Government of the Netherlands, Asia Regional Coordinating Unit, Secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) in collaboration with the China National Committee for Implementation of UNCCD, Environment and Natural Resources Development Division, UNEP/ROAP, FAO/RAPA, and UNESCO, Beijing Office.Supported by The Government of the Netherland