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The availability of, and access to, fresh water is an important issue on the agenda of planners, politicians and executives all over the world. Although there seems to be an abundance of water in global calculations, surface and groundwater resources are increasingly under stress at regional and local scale. A vast majority of all freshwater is found in aquifers, many of them transboundary in extent. In the semi-arid and arid regions of the world, groundwater resources constitute the only reliable water resource for drinking water supply and irrigated food production. However, in spite of the sharply increasing use of aquifers in the past decades, the knowledge about the groundwater in aquifers and its management is still weak in many places. Investments in groundwater schemes are frequently founded on inadequate aquifer information in terms of quantitative data, reliable models and poor monitoring. In the last decades of the 20th century governments and funding agencies increased exploration for groundwater, due to water shortage problems at local and regional levels. Meanwhile the intensive use of groundwater by farmers for irrigated crop production has now placed groundwater resources under stress. To support sustainable management of aquifers, essential quantitative, national and transboundary information is needed to map, model and quantify the stored volume as well as the average annual replenishment; in addition, the chemistry of groundwater must be fully understood. Further, the vulnerability of groundwater resources to drought, over-abstraction and quality deterioration must be assessed, and the natural functions of groundwater for river runoff and ecosystems support safeguarded. In order to contribute to the worldwide efforts to better study and manage aquifer resources, UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme as the lead, the Commission for the Geological Map of the World (CGMW), the UNESCO/IUGS International Geoscience Programme (IGCP), the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR) launched the Worldwide Hydrogeological Mapping and Assessment Programme (WHYMAP) at the beginning of the new century. WHYMAP aims at collecting, collating and visualizing hydrogeological information at the global scale, to convey groundwaterrelated information in an appropriate way for global discussion on water issues and to give recognition to the invisible underground water resources within the UNESCO Programme on World Heritage. WHYMAP also brings together the huge efforts in hydrogeological mapping at regional, national and continental levels. The consortium is responsible for the general thematic outline and the management of the programme. UNESCO provides financial support for the venture, and BGR provides important resources in terms of manpower, mapping capabilities and data. All partners are committed to supply relevant scientific input. Close cooperation with the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC) is assured through UNESCO, and the WHYMAP data are shared with IGRAC. Furthermore, the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) has become part of the network providing valuable global and regional data sets of surface water systems. Other regional centres, scientific organisations, universities and freelance experts in hydrogeology may also participate in WHYMAP in the future. The structure of the WHYMAP network is shown in Figure 1. The WHYMAP Consortium agreed on an iterative approach. This consists in the first instance of providing global data sets of topographic and general hydrogeological information; then, collecting and capturing consolidated, up-to-date information and also, establishing and maintaining a comprehensive Geo-Information System (WHYMAP-GIS) for groundwater relevant data on a global scale as a global network on groundwater. A printed wall map at the scale of 1:25 000 000 should finally be derived from this GIS, together with a digital map server application on the internet and an explanatory booklet with a CD-ROM.

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WHYMAP and the World Map of Transboundary Aquifer Systems at the scale of 1 : 50 000 000 (Special Edition for the 4th World Water Forum, Mexico City, March 2006)