The World Bank poses the following key questions relating to moving forward with river basin planning and management:

• Has the basin organization or the responsible water resources agency developed a river basin or water resources planning process? Have senior policymakers endorsed it? 

• Are there adequate data and information – economic, environmental, and social – for the planning process to be effective? Is more targeted research needed? 

• Does the planning process include genuine participatory processes for the basin community to provide input and make contributions? 

• Does the planning process include bottom-up planning to address the water-related problems and needs of local communities? 

According to the UN-Water Status Report IWRM, there is a recognized need to develop a set of indicators that would characterize the status of implementation of the IWRM approach within countries. There have been many attempts to produce indicators that would adequately encompass diverse situations and the very different time scales at which implementation is taking place. The process is highly complicated and challenging. Moreover, this has to be considered in the light of established reporting mechanisms, e.g. statistics, and avoid adding onerous reporting demands on national governments. UN-Water has undertaken a major initiative through the World Water Assessment Programme to develop a comprehensive set of indicators – a summary of progress is documented in the Second World Water Development Report. To further develop suitable indicators UN-Water has established a Task Force on Indicators, Monitoring, and Reporting. Many indicators already exist to measure social progress and the aim is to add value to these and not reinvent the wheel. A summary of progress made to date by the many agencies and organizations involved has been produced by UNEP-UCC and is found in Annex 7. The Road mapping initiative, being developed concurrently with this Report and complementary to it, lays out a timetable over the next seven years for the development of an achievable set of indicators including those specifically related to IWRM, see http://www.unwater.org. 

A great deal of effort has gone into the development of a set of indicators that meet the requirements of being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, realistic, and timely but more work is required. The Roadmapping initiative, being developed concurrently with this Report and complementary to it, is intended to help countries focus on the steps to be taken towards better water management, drawing inspiration from the IWRM principles and the plans and strategies that they have prepared to help catalyze change. At regional and global levels, the roadmaps could serve as a benchmark for monitoring progress in improving water resources management. Indicators and monitoring could provide countries with a better assessment of the need to advance in their implementation of IWRM. 

In an effort strongly supported by UN-Water, the Asian Development Bank, and other multilateral development agencies, the IWRM Roadmap presented in Appendix 4 to this chapter has been created to measure readiness and progress in planning and implementing IWRM.