Monitoring Water Targets in the Post-2015 Development Goals

Abstract:

The Water Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) provides a comprehensive approach to developing water services in a way that ensures social equity, health, well-being and sustainability for all. In particular, the water goal includes targets related to sanitation, wastewater, water quality, water efficiency, integrated water management and ecosystems (details to be finalized in September 2015). As part of its implementation, methods to monitor target indicators must be developed. National governments will be responsible for reporting on progress toward these targets using national data sets and possibly information from global data sets that applies to their countries. Oversight of this process through the use of global data sets is desirable for encouraging the use of standardized information for comparison purposes.

Disparities in monitoring due to very sparse data networks in some countries can be addressed by using geospatially consistent data products from space-based remote sensing. However, to fully exploit these data, capabilities will be needed to downscale information, to interpolate and assimilate data both in time and space, and to integrate these data with socio-economic data sets, model outputs and survey data in a geographical information system framework. Citizen data and other non-standard data types may also supplement national data systems. A comprehensive and integrated analysis and dissemination system is needed to enable the important contributions that satellites could make to achieving Water SDG targets.

This presentation will outline the progress made in assessing the needs for information to track progress on the Water SDG, options for meeting these needs using existing data infrastructure, and pathways for expanding the role of Earth observations in SDG monitoring. It will also discuss the potential roles of Future Earth’s Sustainable Water Futures Programme (SWFP) and the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in coordinating these efforts.