Stories of science: our water

The Italian public television RAI released a documentary on water resources and their use. FAO contributed discussing water stress and the importance of its monitoring as well as understanding the phenomena for sustainable water and land management. The IMI-SDG6 project coordinator Riccardo Biancalani from the Land and Water Division says, “the most vulnerable to water stress might be those countries with medium levels of waters stress, as in those cases water is not perceived as an issue”, meaning that human activities continue to be carried out or to expand without taking into consideration the potentially limiting factors.  

The documentary introduces: “today, our relationship with water and its varying degrees of availability among the world's populations needs to be rethought to allow everyone, now and in the future, access to this resource essential for survival.” In the last 100 years, the quantity of water used increased six times globally and continue rising. Water stress levels have increased by 2.8 % globally since 2015, reaching 18.6 % in 2021. However, this number masks significant regional variations. More on the water stress indicator (SDG 6.4.2) can be found in the recently published progress report. 

IMI-SDG6 in FAO has been supporting countries to monitor, analyse and use the data on the level of water stress. It also developed advanced methodologies allowing for spatial disaggregation of water stress at the basin and sub-basin levels. This comprises methodological approaches used to assess environmental flows, that is the water needed for ecosystems to remain healthy. More on the IMI-SDG6 capacity development programme, tools and activities can be found here.

The documentary is part of the “Stories of science” series aiming at the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the wide public, and in particular to students. It is available in Italian and can be accessed here (it may only be accessible when connecting from Italy).