Quality known. GlobeWQ final report

Water quality is an essential component of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically highlighted in SDG 6, which focuses on „Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.“ While the title may suggest a primary emphasis on drinking water and sanitation, SDG 6 encompasses a much broader scope, including the preservation of aquatic ecosystems and the maintenance of ambient water quality.Maintaining and restoring good ambient water quality is essential for the integrity of aquatic ecosystems on the one hand, while on the other hand aquatic ecosystems provide services to society such as natural purification of water and the storage of freshwater in the landscape. But water quality hazards are present all over the world: Increasing pollution of freshwater as a result of rapid economic growth and urbanization in developing countries, and sustained, chronic pollution including long-term legacies in developed countries.In 2019 a report entitled „Quality unknown“ by the Worldbank concluded that the water quality status is largely invisible and unknown because of the lack of information on water quality.In the 2021 progress update on SDG 6.3.2, water quality could not be assessed for about three billion people due the lack of water quality data. It is obvious that there is a need to improve water quality information.The GlobeWQ project was designed to address the global challenge of improving water quality information. It was conducted from October 1st, 2019 to December 31st, 2022 funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).At a global scale, GlobeWQ has further developed and applied the WorldQual water quality model, providing information on concentration of fecal coliform bacteria, biological oxygen demand and total dissolved solids for rivers worldwide. A data-driven approach was applied to estimate global nitrate concentrations.In addition to global information products, GlobeWQ has also developed