World Climate Programme-Water (WCP-Water)

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History
Goal and objectives
Administrative organization
Scope of activities
Collaborating partners

 

History

The World Climate Programme-Water (WCP-Water) was established in 1981 as a joint World Meteorological Organization (WMO) - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) activity to meet more effectively the socio-economic needs which depend on water-resource systems, through the improved application of climate data and information. In the ensuing years, WCP-Water activities were organized under four broad topical areas and involved more than three-dozen priority projects. The Programme and its projects were reviewed and coordinated in a series of Planning Meetings between 1981 and 1997. Some of the projects, such as project A.5 (Collection of Global Runoff Data Sets; which lead directly to the establishment of the Global Runoff Data Centre [GRDC]) have been enormously successful and enduring. Overall, the most important contribution of WCP-Water has been in linking climate and water (hydrology and water resources), in terms of both process science and empirical studies of impacts through the initiation and promotion of projects implemented by Members.

However, the Programme had two significant shortcomings: 1) sustaining projects long enough to obtain publishable results; and 2) successfully monitoring a large number of projects with respect to Programme goals and expected deliverables. As a result of these shortcomings, few WCP-Water projects had an impact on such important international programmes as the World Climate Programme (WCP) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). To improve the visibility and effectiveness of WCP-Water, WMO and UNESCO undertook a re-organization of the programme between 1997 and 2001. The conceptual framework for the revised programme, as well as operational functions, implementation guidelines, and collaborating partners are described in detail in the Final Report from the First Meeting of the Steering Committee on WCP-Water.

 

Goal and objectives

The goal of WCP-Water is to promote hydrological activities in the World Climate Programme and related conventions, and to provide the water community with current data and information on hydrologic and water resources conditions and variations, in a climatic context, over a wide range of time and space scales.

 

Supporting this goal are six technical objectives:

 

1.     to provide guidance on the use of basic analytical procedures and statistical methods;

2.     differentiate climatic from human-induced impacts;

3.     expand the use of modelling frameworks as tools for organizing integrated solutions to water problems;

4.     enhance understanding of uncertainty measures and how to use them effectively;

5.     facilitate assessments of hydrologic extremes and water-related natural disasters;

6.     assure the scale compatibility of model linkages, particularly in the linking of atmospheric and hydrologic models.

 

From an applications perspective, the implementation of these goals and objectives is focused on three priority topical areas of social concern:  climate, water and health; climate, water and food security; and climate-related natural disasters and hydrologic extremes in vulnerable basins.  Advances in these areas directly support the following UNESCO and WMO programmes and projects.

 

UNESCO and WMO projects directly benefiting from WCP-Water work in three priority areas

 

 

 

Administrative organization

 

To ensure consistency with organizational and programmatic missions, and adherence to sound scientific and technical principles, the administration and oversight of WCP-Water occurs on distinct three levels.

 

1.     Overall governance of all actions and activities associated with WCP-Water is provided by UNESCO and WMO;

 

2.     Technical guidance of activities conducted under WCP-Water is provided by a Steering Committee composed of a CHy-Expert, an IHP expert and one representative each of the WMO and UNESCO Secretariats.  Invited ex-officio representatives are selected from major collaborating programmes and projects.  Additional experts and representatives of other organizations, programmes and projects may be invited by the Committee to participate in its work on an ad-hoc basis.

 

3.     Day-to-day technical oversight of WCP-Water is handled by an Executive Secretary, in collaboration with the Secretariats of WMO and UNESCO.  The Executive Secretary is selected by the Steering Committee.

 

 

Scope of activities

 

WCP-Water activities encompass a range of concepts and tasks, from pure and applied research to the demonstration of practical applications and principles.  A suite of potential initiatives has been developed.  These initiatives do not represent an exclusive list of what WCP-Water could or should pursue but, rather, the scope of activities appropriate for it to investigate.  In all instances, the initiatives are designed to be implemented over a three- to four-year time frame.  The initial suite of potential initiatives is depicted in the following graphic.

 

Scope and dimensions of WCP-Water implementation

 

 

 

 

Collaborating partners

 

WCP-Water is inherently linked with a number of WMO and UNESCO programmes, and very close interaction with some of these is vital to WCP-Water's success.  The most essential linkages are with WMO's Hydrology and Water Resources Programme (HWRP), World Climate Programme (WCP), and World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and with UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme (IHP).  Within the three priority topical areas, i.e. climate, water and health, climate, water and food security, and climate-related natural disasters and hydrologic extremes in vulnerable basins, WCP-Water seeks input from the World Health Organization (WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR), and the International Association of Hydrological Sciences (IAHS).  Collaboration with projects and specialized working groups of key programmes is also considered to be essential to WCP-Water success.  Thus, such broad endeavors as the World Water Development Report (WWDR), Hydrology for the Environment, Life and Policy (HELP), and CLIVAR assume a more prominent role than in the past.

 

 

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