A well-designed ‘water accounting system’ will support water resources management through analysis of water allocation scenarios to evaluate future trajectories of water use towards resources sustainability. At the same time, it provides information for evidence-based decision-making and policy development. When it is combined with water auditing, it also assesses the institutional effectiveness to govern water resources vis-à-vis the water related SDGs. Furthermore, it can also serve trans boundary water resources management as it provides quantitative and objective information for discussion and negotiation.

Water accounting (WA) is the systematic study of the current status and trends in water supply, demand, accessibility, and use in domains that have been specified.

Water Auditing or Water governance assessment (Wgov) goes one step further than water accounting by placing trends in water supply, demand, accessibility and use in the broader context of governance, institutions, public and private expenditure, legislation and the wider political economy of water of specified domains. FAO promotes water accounting and auditing as mutually supportive processes. Water auditing goes a step further than water accounting by placing trends in water supply, demand, accessibility and use in the broader context of governance, institutions, public and private expenditure, laws, and the wider political economy of water in specified domains. Therefore, the project activities above will be conducted alongside the socio-economic information-gathering and assessment.  

Implementing Water Accounting and Auditing in the project

The Water accounting & auditing system in this project is implemented through three main tracks:

A. Understanding the demand from agriculture (the largest water user but not well known) - crop mapping patterns to assess crop evapotranspiration;

B. Measuring and validating ET to increase certainties on the estimation of evapotranspiration;

C. Implementing water accounting & auditing - understanding the water scarcity and its governance environment.

The approach adopted by the project is a learning by doing approach combining site level piloting with capacity development. Country level application use existing data/information, remote sensing and ground truth validation. Please go to country pages for details on results at country level.

Figure 1. Learning how to use WA at site level