United Nations world water development report 4 : managing water under uncertainty and risk

The fourth edition of the World Water Development Report (WWDR4) is a comprehensive review of the world's freshwater resources and seeks to demonstrate, among other messages, that water underpins all aspects of development, and that a coordinated approach to managing and allocating water is critical. The Report underlines that in order to meet multiple goals water needs to be an intrinsic element in decision-making across the whole development spectrum.

The WWDR4 is separated into four parts.

Part 1, ‘Status, trends and challenges’, provides an overview of recent developments, emerging trends and key challenges, including the external forces driving these and the uncertainties and risks created by the drivers.

Part 2, ‘Managing water under uncertainty and risk’, is the thematic part of the report in which decisions affecting water, from management and institutions to allocation and financing, are investigated through the lens of risk and uncertainty, with particular emphasis on climate change and other drivers of change.

Part 3 (Volume 2), ‘Knowledge base’, contains each of the challenge area reports prepared by UN-Water agencies and the regional reports prepared by the UN regional economic commissions – from which much of the material in Parts 1 and 2 was extracted – as well as other supporting documents.

Part 4 (Volume 3) includes 15 country-level case studies, which describe the progress made in meeting water-related objectives, as well as some obstacles leading to lingering and in many cases worsening problems, showing that there are lessons to be learned from success stories as well as from failures. The following developing country case studies are included: Ghana, Mara River Basin (Kenya and Tanzania), Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan (Indus River Basin), Costa Rica and Mexico (Lerma–Chapala basin).