July 2017: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and partners are conducting online consultations on how “water accounting” can be used to address water scarcity. The agency is promoting the initiative among World Water Council (WWC) members, and it will result in the publication of a ‘White Paper on Water Accounting,’ to be launched at the 8th World Water Forum in Brazil in March 2018.

The consultation, titled ‘Water Accounting & Water for Food,’ is taking place through an online survey that is open from 9 June to 21 July 2017. The report from the survey will serve as a basis for discussion at the 8th World Water Forum.

The aim of water accounting is to provide a clear and transparent basis for decision making on water resources. The practice seeks to make water policymakers and managers aware of the extent and nature of diverse water uses in a variety of sectors and scales, for example, at a river basin or country level, or within certain land-use categories. A water accounting methodology known as WA+, based on global-scale datasets in the public domain has been developed through a partnership between the FAO, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), the CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems, IHE-Delft, and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Water Assessment Programme.

The water accounting survey contributes to the work plan of the Global Framework on Water Scarcity, which was launched at the Marrakech Climate Change Conference in 2016. The Global Framework promotes cooperation towards better use of water in agriculture and the achievement of global goals such as the those in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate. [World Water Council Announcement of Consultation] [Link to Online Survey] [FAO Web Page on Water Accounting] [FAO Web Page on Global Framework on Water Scarcity] [Water Accounting Website]