UNESCO Working Group on Land Subsidence

The Intergovernmental Council for the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) created a Working Group on Land Subsidence for liaison of IHP subproject 8.4, "Investigation on land subsidence due to ground-water exploitation."

Currently, the WGLS comprises 20 subsidence experts from 12 countries (i.e. USA, Mexico, The Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Egypt, China, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Pakistan) and a UNESCO–IHP representative.

Past, current and planned activities of the UNESCO–IHP WGLS are primarily focused on its mission to enhance scientific/technical knowledge exchange and promote/facilitate international exchange of information regarding natural and anthropogenic subsidence processes and the sustainable development of our natural resources in areas susceptible to subsidence.

Some of the fairly recent past and current activities, beyond the regular efforts to convene the international subsidence symposia, consist on other networking, publishing, research and programmatic endeavors.

The proceedings of the nine published symposia jointly with two companion books contain relevant references of land subsidence research and case studies that cover anthropogenic and natural land subsidence processes worldwide.