Stockholm Water Symposium
The Stockholm Water Symposium for Effective Long Term Water Resources Management
The Stockholm Water Symposium, a part of the annual World Water Week in Stockholm, aims to serve as a link between practice, science, policy making and decision making in the search for effective, long-term water resources management. While the character of the symposia is comprehensive and reflective, the agenda also includes discussions of specific issues. The aim is to secure a proper tie between problems and their main causes on the one hand, and technology and governance perspectives of problem solving on the other.
Since 1991, the Symposia have and analyzed related issues and their measures needed and how different overcome. After a first exploratory year, the Symposia have been focusing on a series of themes within three niches:
- Minimizing harmful fluxes from land to water (1991-1997)
- Water is the key to socio-economic development and quality of life (1998 -2002)
- Drainage basin security: prospects for trade off and benefit sharing in a globalised world (2003-2007)
Annually, experts from around the world attend the Symposium. The task, huge and multifaceted though it may seem, is tackled systematically and methodically at each Symposium, with due attention paid to similarities and differences between regions of the world, representing various phases of development, political systems and climatic conditions.
The holistic approach spans disciplines, professions and societal sectors; integrates water quality with water quantity, flow and mobility; and combines problem solving techniques with hydrochemistry and hydroecology, natural sciences and engineering with social, economic and legal sciences, and scientific understanding with policy responses.
Through the Stockholm Water Initiative, findings from the Symposia are brought to the attention of policy makers and the public, or integrated into project initiatives to transfer knowledge and carry it further. Thus, the Stockholm Water Symposium serves as a catalyst in the search for effective and long-term management of the world`s water resources.
As an international conference for scientists, politicians, decision makers and different stakeholders, the Stockholm Water Symposium has promoted an understanding of global water problems. This understanding will help further cooperation in matters relating to preservation and protection of the Earth`s water.
