Hydrology.nl

The Krakow Declaration on the Protection of Groundwater Quality, produced at the excellently organized XXXVIIIth IAH Congress, held 12–17 September 2010 in Kraków, Poland, calls on Governments, UN Agencies and other multi- and bilateral agencies, and seeks to ensure that their policies on water resources management on national and regional levels should recognize, inter alia, the important role of groundwater in water quality management.

Further, they should recognize:

• that maintaining good water quality in aquifers is the fastest way for achieving the MDGs, by providing cost effective, safe drinking water supplies to more than half of the world’s population,
• that there is intrinsic water chemistry of some aquifers, that can affect human health, if not properly identified and addressed,
• that poorly planned land based activities can cause difficult to reverse deterioration of groundwater quality, and that land management policies have to be developed to minimise risks to long term water quality.