---

History

The Commission was founded in 1998 by Dr. Tony Jones (Aberystwyth) as “Study Group on Hydrological Extreme Events”. It was upgraded to Commission status in 2002 and renamed to “Commission for Water Sustainability”. Following the retirement of several founding members and the ending of the term of the previous chair, Prof. C. Cassardo, in 2015 the composition of the Steering Committee (SC) recently changed.

With strong encouragement from IGU executives and the renewed confirmation as a Commission in good standing by IGU Exco in 2017 a new Chair and Steering Committee were elected. Since then efforts have been made to consolidate and update the list of active members by sending out templates on research profiles to over 350 contacts listed on the Commission’s data base. All approached people who returned the filled-in templates in due time are now officially recognised as active members of the Commission (for details on statistics and profiles see respective sections on this website).

Objectives and philosophy

The Commission strives to provide a recognised platform for international scientific exchange of physical and human Geographers as well as scientists from other disciplinary backgrounds sharing insights, knowledge and data on water- sustainability in its broadest sense. This includes natural and human impacts on the availability and quality of water and their implications for sustainable water use at local, regional and global scale. The Commission specifically encourages the dialogue between physical and human water sciences including economic, cultural, legal and medical aspects to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of natural and man-made factors governing water sustainability. A particular focus is on water–stressed areas worldwide encouraging and fostering mutually beneficial collaboration between scientists from developing and developed nations.