A key focus of the meeting centred around the global events taking place from 10th – 13th June 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of the IHP and 60 years of water sciences at UNESCO. The celebrations will highlight the role the IHP has played in the advancement of hydrological science, international cooperation, and capacity building over the last 50 years, and how this helps to address global water-related issues.
The anniversary will not only celebrate past achievements but will showcase the latest scientific innovations from across the network and facilitate dialogue around tackling emerging water challenges in an increasingly complex world. The UK has been an active contributor to the IHP throughout the last half century and several experts from the UK will be actively participating in these celebration events.
Over the years, UK contributions to the IHP have included leadership roles in major initiatives, authorship of key reports, and convenorship of events. By way of example, one current UK-led project that will feature in the Anniversary events, is UKCEH’s ROBIN project. ROBIN stands for Reference Observatory of Basins for INternational hydrological climate change detection. With The IHP’s support, the initiative has created a growing network international experts (now including more than 60 partner organisations from 30 countries across five continents) to understand how rivers and water systems are changing due to climate change.
The team have recently produced an open access data descriptor paper in Nature alongside a freely available global dataset of over 3,000 catchments, which can be used to underpin new science endeavours and provide evidence to support international climate policy and adaptation strategies. As such, it exemplifies how coordinated international collaboration, made possible by organisations such as UNESCO, can lead to meaningful scientific progress and help address pressing water-related challenges world-wide.
More information on ROBIN via the UKCEH website (external link)
More information on Professor Harry Dixon, UKCEH (External Link)
