Sunday 26 March 2023 - 10:38:43 pm
Tue 06-12-2022 23:14 PM
PARIS,6th December, 2022 (WAM) – UNESCO is hosting the UN-Water first Summit on Groundwater on 7-8 December 2022 at its headquarters in Paris. The goal of the summit is to move groundwater higher up the global political agenda and to ensure that the resource vital to mitigating the impact of climate change in the decades to come is fully understood and properly managed.
Groundwater provides almost half of all drinking water worldwide, around 40% of the water used in irrigation and about one-third of the supply required for industry. However, since aquifers flow underground and are, thus, invisible, the management of aquifers tends to be neglected, even though they represent most of the fresh water on Earth. The aim of the summit will be to make the invisible visible.
The summit is likely to call for huge investments in water education in order to improve the knowledge about groundwater systems, their management and make better use of its potential.
With over 850 on-site participants and more than 4000 online participants, the groundwater summit will cover a vast array of topics that are considered vital to managing groundwater more responsibly. Topics will stress the need for greater investment in capacity-building, finance, and innovation, for instance, and for greater co-operation in managing trans-boundary aquifers.
