Against the backdrop of growing challenges posed by droughts, floods, and water pollution, the German federal government adopted the National Water Strategy (NWS) in March 2023. The strategy aims to ensure that high-quality, affordable, and sufficient supply of drinking water will be available at all times and in all regions of Germany in 2050 and beyond. Additionally, its goal is to improve the water quality of groundwater, rivers, lakes, and seas.

The NWS is divided into ten strategic themes and consists of an action program with 78 concrete measures. Numerous stakeholders from all sectors are involved—ranging from agriculture and industry to nature conservation, public administration, urban development, and transportation. Among others, these include federal and state agencies, water management institutions and organisations, research institutions as well as stakeholders from local administrative authorities, the water industry sector, and environmental organizations. An interministerial working group (IMA) will coordinate the implementation of the strategy at the federal level and produce a monitoring report every six years starting in 2029. This report documents the implementation of the NWS and serves as the basis for the further development of the action program.

KWB coordinates the joint project to develop a methodology for motitoring the NWS.

The methodology needs to meet the following requirements:

• systematically and comprehensively document the status of the implementation of the NWS,

• measure the progress of individual actions and identify synergies, challenges, and conflicts between different actions,

• identify any need for course correction in a timely manner, and

• keep partners within the action program informed about the status of the NWS and involve them strategically.

The methodology forms the essential basis for the IMA monitoring report and will make it possible to compare developments across multiple reporting cycles.

Central to the joint project is the development of a consistent evaluation system for the National Water Strategy. Criteria and indicators will be defined step by step, technically coordinated, and integrated into the methodology. Possible indicators include, for example, data on water quality and household drinking water consumption or investment backlogs in the water sector. To provide information on the progress of individual actions, rating scales will be defined according to different categories of measures.

Due to future legislative changes or new research findings, it is to be expected that new indicators will emerge as the NWS is implemented over time. The methodology must therefore be adaptable and suitable for use in the further development of future initiatives. A consistent evaluation system makes it possible to quantify priorities and derive further measures from them.

A core component of the project is the involvement of stakeholders in the process of developing the methodology. To facilitate this, the research team will develop a concept for a representative framework that will visualize the implementation status of the action program and the goals of the NWS. This will enable individual stakeholders to stay informed about the program’s progress, share their own contributions, and communicate them with one another.

An initial status report, which will be presented to the NWS stakeholders, will serve as a prototype for the methodology. The status conference is organized and conducted by KWB.

The project overview from the German Environment Agency (UBA) provides a concise summary of the initiative.

Additional information on the National Water Strategy from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) can be found here.