The long-term goal is to promote real investment in management and development of transboundary water systems through strong stakeholder engagement.

Objective

The main objective is to develop transboundary waters assessment methodologies for the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) in setting priorities and catalyse a partnership for conducting such a global assessment.

Outputs

• The feasible, ecosystem-based methodology for a global assessment of five transboundary water systems. The methodology will be used for assessing the changing conditions resulting form human and natural causes. The methodology will cover also interlinkages among five water systems. These five water systems are: rivers, lakes, groundwater basins, Large Marine Ecosystems and open ocean.  Development of methodologies will be based on indicators and existing data and information sources.

• Partnership and institutional arrangements among agencies and organisations to conduct such a global assessment.

For whom

The assessment is the tool for the policy makers, GEF and international organisations to set science-based priorities for financial resource allocation.

The assessment will respond to the need of GEF IW to address more cost–effectively transboundary concerns, and allow monitoring trends and the impacts of GEF IW programmes and other agencies and actors.

UNEP and other UN organizations can use results to contribute to the global assessments such as Global Environment Outlook (GEO), United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment and the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP).

Regional organizations can use results in assessing the state and improvements of the environment and natural resources

National governments can use results to set national priorities between transboundary and domestic issues.

Project Timeframe and Links

TWAP was approved by GEF in January 2009. The time frame is 18 months, June 2009 – November 2010. Starting with the two years medium size project (MSP) to develop an agreed methodology for five transboundary water systems taking into consideration partnership arrangements.  After successful testing in regions it will then go into a full scale project.

TWAP will establish a systematic links with the GEF-UNEP-UNU, executed project “Enhancing the use of science in international waters projects to improve project results”