This report focuses on national and regional capacities for the management of shared water resources in ESCWA member countries. Specific attention is paid to the legal frameworks for shared water resources management and the ways in which legal instruments and agreements can support integrated water resources management in shared river basins and shared aquifers.

The objective of the Survey is to provide governments, and the general public with a snapshot of the current socioeconomic situation and the outlook for 2011.

Providing an analysis of the global situation in mid-2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, is a difficult task. The outbreak has exerted tremendous pressure on the global economy, the scale of which is still unclear. Consequently, the present report sets out two scenarios: a moderate one projecting that the crisis will end and the economy will rebound in the last quarter of 2020; and a pessimistic one in which the crisis will persist throughout 2020 and continue in the first quarter of 2021.

The information society, in which information is processed efficiently, including the production, exchange, adaptation, and use of information, is the appropriate environment for achieving sustainable development and enhancing the quality of life for all citizens. However, the move towards the information society constitutes a real challenge to developing countries, particularly in view of the expanding digital divide with developed countries, thus rendering them increasingly vulnerable to a reduction of their productive and economic capacities.