UNEP GEMS/Water Programme is the global authority for water quality monitoring and assessment, hosted at the National Water Research Institute, in Burlington, Canada. The twin goals of the Programme are to improve water quality monitoring and assessment capabilities in participating countries, and to determine the state and trends of regional and global water quality.
These goals are implemented through the online data bank, GEMStat, www.gemstat.org, including water quality data and information from more than 3,000 stations in 106 countries, with four million entries for lakes, reservoirs, rivers, wetlands and groundwater systems.
By compiling this database, GEMS/Water adds value to country-level data by contributing to international water quality assessments. All participating Governments benefit from data analysed by the Programme, especially when they are implementing their Millennium Development Goals on water and sanitation, and in achieving agreed upon targets. Governments and other data contributors are vital to the programme’s success.
