EVOLUTION OF SUSTAINABLE WATER RESOURCES INDICATORS

The Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable (SWRR) is one of several natural resource roundtables with government, corporate, and NGO participation. SWRR has been a subgroup of the Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI) since 2001, and operates under authority of OMB M-92-01 and the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The purpose of the Roundtable is to provide an open forum for exchanging ideas and information to foster collaboration on ways to manage water resources in such a way that the resource and its uses may be sustained over the long term. Earlier three papers in this series described work leading up to the completion of the 2005 Preliminary Report. The present paper continues the idea that water indicators will have to evolve over many years to really become accepted for public policy making. Some of the most important topics that do not appear in the 2005 Preliminary Report are shown here. The intent is to illustrate how gaps in the indicator series might be filled, and how additional indicators may be needed to complete a short list of key national water indicators. The journey toward Sustainable Water Resources Management begins by determining the most important water issues and indicators. Sustainable Water Resources Roundtable participants are committed to interdisciplinary, inter-jurisdictional, and cross-ownership collaboration that identifies and supports national, state, and field-level activities to sustain water resources. The long-term goals of SWRR include the development of principles, criteria and indicators to support decision-making and identification of opportunities for collaboration on research needs