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Article: Laurence
D. Mee, The views expressed are those of the authors acting in their personal capacities as members of the Advisory Committee on Protection of the Sea (ACOPS ) Advisory Boards, and not necessarily those of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Secretriat, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), or UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS). See also GIWA Bibliography, provided by UNEP. This site presents a Preliminary Bibliography of Assessments and Information Sources by geographical region. [ Introduction | Examining the holistic approach ] [ A geographical framework for action ] [ The operational phases of GIWA ] [ Aggregating the actors... desegregating the data ] [ GIWA outputs - a major step towards sustainability? When confronted with a document entitled "Global International Waters Assessment", the reaction of many people is to sigh and remark, "Not another assessment! Don't we have enough information to start taking action?" The unfortunate truth is that, although we have identified many areas where immediate action on environmental protection is necessary and often overdue, most of our actions focus on removing the symptoms of environmental degradation but neither identify nor address its root causes. Actions aimed at resolving environmental problems in international waters frequently fail to identify the geographical boundaries of the problem. These boundaries of the area where the problem itself is observed may not encompass the location of the cause. Complicating matters further is the fact that there is very limited financial support for addressing international waters problems. This makes it necessary to agree upon funding priorities in order to deal with certain key issues whilst gradually trying to attain a more comprehensive approach towards the others. Objective information, which helps to pinpoint the root causes of environmental problems as well as the barriers to be overcome In solving them, is clearly a valuable asset for improving the design of international programmes offering technical and financial assistance to the affected countries. By its recent approval of Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA), the Council of the Global Environment Facility (1) has taken a very bold step towards providing this basic and currently unavailable information for its own use and for the use of its partners. Furthermore, by making this information available to the general public, it will help to foster a greater understanding of the severity of environmental problems in international waters, their societal causes and the options available for solving them. The launch of GIWA comes at a particularly auspicious time in the "year of the oceans", and with the decision of the UN Special Session on the Environment (UNGASS)" to commit the work of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) to special sessions on freshwater, in 1998 and the seas, in 1999. It responds to two recent international declarations: the Potomac Declaration on Oceans and Security (see and the Stockholm Statement on Interaction of Land Activities, Freshwater and Enclosed Seas. Article 5 of the Potomac Declaration states: "It is of paramount importance to deepen our current understanding of the root causes of the environmental issues in terms of market failures, inadequacies in policy and governance, and deficiencies in information. A profound interdisciplinary study, bridging social and physical science and integrating seas and associated land catchment areas, is required at a national, regional and global level. This should lead to practical measures to address the root causes of the problems themselves. Initiatives such as the recently proposed GEF Global International Water Assessment (GIWA) should be supported." The present paper reviews the approach adopted for GIWA, its strategy and the expected products. It illustrates how the GIWA approach will provide an important tool for international efforts to protect the marine and freshwater environments and to improve environmental security. It highlights the need for comprehensive participation of existing regional and sub-regional bodies in the GIWA process if it is to achieve this important objective. 2. EXAMINING THE HOLISTIC APPROACH The term "holistic" entered into vogue at the time of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in 1992. Currently, "holistic" is applied to statements on the environment with the monotonous routine of applying vinaigrette dressing to salads. Beyond the rhetoric, however, the use of the term "holistic" was intended to stress that environmental problems should be dealt with at their roots, irrespective of sectoral or geographical boundaries. The reality, of course, is that we live in a society governed in a very sectoral manner. Governmental sectors, for example, have been divided according to the perceived basic needs of particular societies, starting with food and agriculture, housing, energy, economy, education, defense, transport, etc. The general appreciation, from the time of the 1960s, that human development was resulting in serious deterioration of natural ecosystems, motivated the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. Unfortunately, this often led to the creation of a new separate "environment sector", though this had not been the intention of the Conference itself. In some cases, the new but often weak Ministries of Environment, were unable to influence other ministries regarding the environmental impact of their own actions. The 1992 Rio Conference came at a time when the ineffectiveness of this approach was becoming apparent. Ironically, however, it also came at a time when palpable improvements in environmental awareness were being observed in many countries. The holistic approach is particularly lacking in the case of the "global commons" (the atmosphere and international waters). The commons are transboundary in nature but provide "free" goods and services to the economies of individual countries. One of the reasons for environmental degradation is the failure to pay the costs of these services (e.g., the cost of protecting the environment against pollution) or to seek better practices to avoid using them. In the case of international waters, current usage of the natural systems is unsustainable and there is clear evidence for the decline in fisheries, coastal ecosystems, freshwater quantity and quality, and the quantity and quality of water in aquifers. If these problems are to be managed, there is a need to coordinate response in a manner that transcends sectoral and geographical boundaries. The challenge is how to strategize and respond holistically but act within sectoral and geographical boundaries of our present society? The Global Environment Facility provides one way of responding to this challenge. It provides funding for "incremental costs", which may be regarded as the additional cost involved in extending projects designed to protect the environment of a single country in order to protect the shared global environment. Incremental cost funding is thus designed to bridge the gap between political boundaries and environmental boundaries. Currently, the GEF is the only globally accessible incremental funding mechanism. Its resources are focussed through operational programmes on four basic issues:
The International Waters portfolio is the only one which does not address a single global convention. As a result, it has often proven difficult to prioritise projects in these areas, particularly given the insufficient understanding of the nature and root causes of environmental problems in this area. GIWA was proposed to the GEF as an effective means of overcoming this conceptual difficulty and to develop well targeted practical proposals for incremental cost funding. The overall objective of GIWA is to develop a comprehensive strategic assessment that may be used by GEF and its partners to identify priorities for remedial and mitigatory actions in international waters, designed to achieve significant environmental benefits at national, regional and global levels. Causal chains Clearly, the first step in promoting a response to complex environmental problems is to understand the causal chain between perceived problems and their societal root causes. A short visit to a causal chain will help to illustrate this point. A causal chain is a series of statements that demonstrate and summarize, in a stepwise manner, the linkages between problems and their underlying or "root" causes. Uncertainties accompanying each linkage should be clearly stated. The analysis also permits barriers to resolving the problems to be investigated. A causal chain presents the nature of the problem itself, including the effects and transboundary consequences, and then probes the linkages between the problem and its societal causes. In its practical application, it can serve as a model into which regionally relevant information may be inserted. When properly supported with quantitative information, the causal chain can be reversed and used to study the implications of different policy options in the improvement or worsening of environmental problems. Such an analysis may also be used to examine the effects of one policy decision on another, seemingly unrelated issue. Introduction of sewerage and primary treatment in a coastal city might improve human health and conditions for coastal tourism, for example, but may exacerbate eutrophication and impact aesthetic conditions through increased algal blooms, thus providing a disincentive to tourists. By inducing eutrophication, it could also contribute transboundary effects on biological diversity and fisheries production. The transboundary effects, together with some of the domestic ones could be avoided by investment in better treatment technology, part of which could be considered as an incremental cost, over and above the domestic "baseline" investment in sewerage and primary treatment. Five major areas of concern: 23 issues Causal chain analyses will be one of the important tools used for GIWA. The first meetings of an ad-hoc group of international experts, called to help design the GIWA approachs, decided to cluster the GIWA analysis into five major areas of concern, namely:
For each of these areas of concern, a number of "issues" were identified, such as the eutrophication issue described above. Twenty-three of such issues form the starting point of the causal chain analyses: Freshwater
shortage Pollution Habitat
and community modification Unsustainable
exploitation of fisheries and other living resources Global
change In selecting the target issues and tracing the causal chains, care will be taken not to pursue a highly anthropocentric approach, for example, by ignoring the freshwater needs of the natural environment or the intrinsic as well as human-centred service value of wetlands. This example is a particularly relevant one since the recent Comprehensive Freshwaters Assessment, one of the studies upon which GIWA will build, demonstrated that surface freshwater will soon be a major limiting factor for human development and that water supplies will increasingly be denied to non-human users. 3. A GEOGRAPHICAL FRAMEWORK FOR ACTION The holistic approach requires better definition of system boundaries. In the case of international waters, it is logical to consider freshwater catchment areas and the associated sea or lake receiving waters as a single entity. Clearly, for some purposes it is necessary to subdivide these entitles into individual river or tributary basins, or to consider the ocean area by itself. The principle, however, remains the same; the boundary is defined by the area containing the environmental problem and its root causes. How would this approach work in practice? A second ad-hoc GIWA expert group was called to examine this issue. The task was to divide the world into a series of areas, based upon a mix of environmental, biogeographical and geopolitical factors which seemed the most appropriate for the purposes of this project. The main determining factor was the integrity of each unit in terms of encompassing the major causes and effects of environmental problems associated with each transboundary water area, whether river basin, groundwater, lake or sea. In many cases, a drainage area and associated marine basin (often a large marine ecosystem, LME) were the most appropriate units. 9 regions, 66 sub-regions 66 of these sub-regions were identified and grouped into nine regions, for the convenience of project management only. The 66 sub-regions will be the basic units of assessment of GIWA.
The decision to structure GIWA on a basin-wide approach is one that follows the logic of UNCED Agenda 21. This approach is already being adopted in regions such as the Baltic Sea (Helsinki Commission) and the Black Sea (GEF Black Sea Environmental Programme) or the Mediterranean (revised Barcelona Convention).
4. THE OPERATIONAL PHASES OF GIWA GIWA is a necessarily ambitious project-- the complexity of the task does not allow it to be otherwise. It must be both comprehensive and synoptic and will require extensive data gathering and processing In all 66 sub-regions simultaneously. If it is to be successful, its operation must proceed in a very rational and well-coordinated sequence. The assessment is designed in five phases. Phase
1: This phase, already completed, had the main objectives of defining the thematic analytical scope of GIWA and establishing the operational geographic units of assessment. As illustrated earlier, it developed the causal chain approach which is applicable, with small variants to all types of' international waters: seas; rivers; lakes and groundwaters. It will eventually need to be extended to examine uncertainties, policy options and barriers to addressing the causes, but the power and utility of the methodology was amply illustrated. Phase
2: The network established to accomplish the work of GIWA will consist of national experts and institutions, regional and global collaborating bodies organised around the geographic units of assessment and grouped into nine major regions. Overall coordination of the work of the participating individuals and institutions will take place through focal points for each of the sub-regions who will participate in the work of nine regional task teams, supported and assisted by a core team of full-time specialist covering both regional and thematic concerns. The city of Kalniar, Sweden, has agreed to host the core team and provide it with good working facilities. The core team will be advised by and report to a Steering Grooup of senior scientists and representatives of the major co-sponsoring organisations. Individual members of the core team will function as links to, and focal points for, one or more of the regional task teams. During the
first three months, the primary task of the core team will be to The first meeting of the Steering Group will be convened within four months from commencement of the project to agree upon the principal components of the GIWA Network, namely the composition of the regional task teams, and the regional organisations hosting the task teams. The network is intended to be "open-ended" and can grow according to the needs and in-kind contributions of sponsors and participants. During the subsequent six months, the core team will convene the necessary expert consultations for the completion of a preliminary GIWA Assessment Protocol and will convene first meetings of all regional task teams to review the protocol. They shall also draw upon the experience of the regional teams in order to design an approved methodology for conducting causal chain analyses to examine societal root causes of water related environmental problems and guidelines for the conduct of transboundary diagnostic analyses -- a primary GIWA product applicable to GEF International Waters projects. In addition, the expert consultations will identify the needs for establishment of Thematic Task Teams, and should also identify needs for case studies where strictly necessary, particularly in the socio-economic domain. The anticipated products at the end of year one are:
Phase
3: During the second twelve months, the national experts and institutions shall gather and analyse the information, necessary for applying the GIWA Assessment Protocol at the sub-regional level. They will be assisted in this task by the regional task team, the core team and where necessary the thematic task teams. Together with the core team, the thematic and regional task teams shall, as far as possible, complete regional assessments based on the products of the sub-regional assessments. This process will be designed in a iterative manner in order to review the quality and relevance of' the information gathered and to ensure comparability and compatibility of' the analyses. There will be differences in the approach required in each region as some reginal studies have already consolidated the information required by GIWA, whereas others have very scarce and fragmented information. GIWA products resulting from these activities will include:
During this third phase, the thematic task teams in collaboration with the core team, shall begin the elaboration of a series of global reviews based on the outcomes of the work of the UN Commission for Sustainable Development. These will be developed through integration of information from the regional studies and historical information and will be completed and published in the third year of GIWA. In some cases, these reviews will be based upon existing programmes - reviews conducted by the contributors to GIWA. The work of existing bodies will not be duplicated and GIWA will serve to provide added value where possible. Phase
4: During the third year of GIWA, dedicated to scenario development and policy options analysis, the work of the task teams and the core team will be focused upon the evaluation of alternative scenarios. The analyses will incorporate a number of scenarios developed on the basis of projected actions taken to address the identified societal causes of environmental degradation. The initial starting point for these scenarios will be "current trends". In effect, from an economic perspective, the analyses will consider the implications of measures to internalize environmental externalities. Different alternative approaches will be considered in order to reach a given objective (alternative scenarios, policy changes, investment in technological solutions, etc.). From a social perspective, the analysis will consider the incremental cost of measures to encourage the modification of unsustainable social and economic development trends. The uncertainties in the scenarios must also be identified and clearly stated. The predictive phase of the assessment will build on the studies and analyses undertaken over the entire three-year period of GIWA. The products will be finalised in the third year when sufficient validated data become available. This phase will require the participation of well-recognized regional and international experts, supported where possible from the bodies and donors contributing to GIWA itself. How can this phase of the project avoid this assessment of options from becoming a mere academic exercise with little relevance to current society? As an integral part of project strategy, a consultation has been planned with key stakeholders during Phase 4 of implementation. This will enable the initial consultations of the policy options analysis to he assessed by discussing them with a representative group of stakeholders, including representatives of civil society. It is hoped that co-sponsors will be able to support additional exercises of this kind in order to maintain as wide a representation as possible of civil society in the iterative process of the GIWA assessment, particularly with respect to the studies of policy options. The principal product from the third year of GIWA will be a detailed scheme for placing priorities on transboundary environmental issues in the various sub-regions. Other products at the end of year three will be:
The final phase of GIWA will be dedicated to the preparation and dissemination of the global and regional GIWA products. Whilst numerous intermediate products will have been produced and disseminated during the earlier phases of the project, many of these will be of a highly technical nature. During this phase, emphasis will be directed towards the preparation of reviews that are easily comprehensible to various sectors of society. GIWA should not remain a desk exercise but should be made available to the public in general, to educational institutions and to national and regional authorities. The GIWA meta-data base and regional reports should be freely available through electronic communications, on CD ROM and, where strictly necessary, in hard copy. The GIWA core team and the task teams, together with specialists on public education and awareness will complete this work. Anticipated products from this phase include:
5. AGGREGATING THE ACTORS , DESEGREGATING THE DATA Setting up and implementing GIWA poses three particularly important challenges. The
first challenge is how to bring together all of the necessary expertise. The most innovative products of GIWA will surely result from the interdisciplinary nature of the regional task teams and the core tearn itself. Clearly, the expertise needed to cover transboundary freshwater, marine, coastal and groundwater issues, as well as societal causes of degradation and driving forces of change, cannot presently be found within any single international body. The participation of experts from established international bodies such as ICSU and Group of Experts on Scientific Ascpects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP) will be essential in this work. It will be essential for GIWA to count upon the support of the international conununity in order to achieve its work in an effective manner. Additionally, the GIWA core team shall ensure that the necessary support is provided to the regional and thematic task teams during this phase of the projct. They shall facilitate the provision of additional expertise to regions requiring such support and actively promote GIWA to additional potential donors. Much of the work of GIWA will depend on day-to-day electronic mail communications established by the regional task team members and the individual experts working at national level. It is hoped that some of the GIWA donors may be prepared to establish scholarships at relevant postgraduate research departments in order to provide additional dedicated intellectual input to the GIWA process. The
second challenge -- funding -- is closely related to the first. The response to some of the requests from other potential contributors is encouraging but it will be necessary to involve more national and regional bodies in co-funding GIWA if it is to have the necessary global coverage. The cost savings and benefits from improved focusing of' international aid programmes should well compensate the initial outlay for participating in the project. It is also hoped that bilateral donors will be able to assist some of the poorer countries to participate more fully in GIWA through the provision of technical and financial assistance. The
third major challenge concerns the information requirements for socio-economic
analyses as these will provide the basic quantitative information to back
the policy scenarios to be developed in the fourth phase of GIWA. A thematic economic task team will be established to oversee this work, provide advice and assistance to some regions, and to ensure consistency in the application of the GIWA assessment protocol. The participation of international financial institutions is essential in this work. 6. GIWA OUTPUTS -- A MAJOR STEP TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY? GIWA should make a major contribution to policies and actions that will lead to protection and more sustainable use of international waters. The products of GIWA will represent the most objective comprehensive assessment of transboundary water issues, and their societal root causes, conducted so far. The expected outcomes of the project will be:
The material generated will be of enormous potential use to public education programmes, including formal education. Great care will be taken to present the results of GIWA in a manner which is readily accessible and understandable to the publicin general, as well as through the strictly technical formal reports. Consultations will be conducted with potential users of this material regarding the most appropriate manner for presenting it. By enhancing the flow of information to civil society, particularly in looking beyond the symptoms of environmental problems to their societal root causes, GIWA will provide additional tools for strengthening the GFF IW Portfolio and the credibility of all donors and partners associated with it. It will help to convert the holistic approach from rhetoric into reality |
Global International Waters Assessment, GIWA
E-mail: info@giwa.net
Page revised December 27, 2001