Heritage not only includes man-made structures, places and objects, but also the spiritual beliefs, social values and management practices like traditions and customs. Socio-economic development of human societies has been intricately linked with various forms of water sharing and use. Over the years with dynamic global changes, the relevance of ancient knowledge may appear to diminish.
The need is to ease and be able to identify these ancient crystals of wisdom and adapt them to the present challenges. The World Water Systems Heritage (WSH) programme, a joint global initiative of International Commission on irrigation and Drainage (ICID) and the World Water Council, addresses this need and attempts to provide multi-disciplinary insights in the heritage wisdom from public policy perspectives.

WSH program aims at identifying and preserving the people-centred water management systems, organizations, regimes and rules as intangible water heritage is considered to be of outstanding value to humanity that creates coexistent social system for humanity and sound environment and giving them recognition.

Recognised systems would be included in ICID’s “Register of WSH” and would be presented a plaque citing its salient features. WSH Secretariat may provide technical guidance to the institution through a team of experts to draw learnings from the system. The WSH Secretariat would maintain and publish the Register of WSH and provide support to the institution by mobilizing WWC resources, invitation to hold special sessions at World Water Forums, technical consultations, information deliveries, and participation in political process.

For more information on nominations, kindly find the criteria and brochure attached below (I would suggest to keep it uniform with other awards as Scheme and nomination form.)

• Brochure
• Criteria and Nomination Form

8th World Water Forum

The 8th World Water Forum jointly organized by Brazil and the World Water Council (WWC) took place from 19-23 March 2018 in Brasilia. ICID was represented by President Eng. Felix Reinders, Secretary General Ashwin B. Pandya, National Committee members, and stakeholders.
More than 10 Heads of State, including the President of Brazil, Michel Temer, President of Hungary, János Áder, President of Senegal, Macky Sall, South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon, alongside CEOs of fortune 500 companies, among many others, participated in the high-level panels and more than 200 sessions.
The water management systems selected under the World Water System Heritage (WSH) 2018 were
(1) The Genbegawa Irrigation Canal System, Japan;
(2) Sekikawa Suikei Land Improvement District, Japan; and
(3) Sheikh-Bahaei Water Allocation Scroll, Iran