It directs you to resources that have already been developed and are hosted elsewhere, but have been reviewed by domain experts against selection criteria. Each included tool has a description along with a guide to how to get started in evaluating it further, through the tool's external site.

Recognising that practitioners need to efficiently develop national and basin-level plans, implement programmes and measure progress, the toolkit was designed to help users with broad mandates — across environmental, climate or water portfolios — identify the most useful resources as quickly as possible. It does not cover the universe of conservation, ecosystem restoration or water management tools; instead, it focuses only on the tools that were designed to integrate freshwater ecosystem considerations into these broader processes.

The tools within this toolkit can be used to support processes ranging from setting targets for inland waters conservation and restoration (e.g. Targets 2 and 3 of the Global Biodiversity Framework), integrating freshwater considerations into planning documents (e.g. National Adaptation Plans), and guiding monitoring and reporting (e.g. National Reports on Land Degradation Neutrality Target Setting).

The toolkit is intended to be widely used — wherever there are opportunities to accelerate the implementation of freshwater ecosystem conservation and restoration.

Start with the full catalogue: browse the whole library and narrow it down with the filters — topic, category, coverage, resource type and supported commitments — or search by name. If you would rather be guided, Help me choose asks three short questions and applies the matching filters for you, landing you back in the catalogue.

When you are satisfied with the list of tools that meet your criteria, you can review at a glance a summary of each tool: who develops it, the spatial scale of application, what it is designed to do and how it could be used. Before following the link to the tool's original source — which opens in another window, external to the toolkit — you can view guided instructions on how to use the selected tool.

Questions about the Freshwater Toolkit? Write to us:

The goal of the Freshwater Toolkit is to provide resources — tools — that enable users to undertake a particular task related to integrating freshwater considerations into planning processes. We have relied on experts to help curate these tools, and have consulted with end users during the development process to better understand their needs.

We began with a list of roughly 50 candidate tools, identified by experts within Freshwater Challenge partner organisations as being potentially relevant. This initial list included a mix of analytical software, interactive data explorers and portals, guidance documents and manuals, and case studies. "Task orientation" was used as an initial screen to separate tools from what we have classified as supporting resources — sources of topical information that can be consulted, but do not contain sufficiently clear steps to guide the user on a defined task.

Tasks include: assessing baseline conditions; setting targets and prioritising sites; implementing freshwater conservation and/or restoration projects; and monitoring and reporting. Additional criteria for inclusion: an explicit link to freshwater ecosystems, applicability at a national or basin scale, and adequate documentation.

This classification was discussed and refined through individual consultations with end users selected from Freshwater Challenge member countries and their government focal points. End users were separately consulted about the user interface — how they prefer to navigate the tool catalogue, the amount of information they need to know about a particular tool, and any other features they would like to see.

The toolkit is not designed to be exhaustive, nor an aggregator of all relevant informational resources. It is not an endorsement or ranking of the tools within the catalogue. External tools can become updated, modified or deprecated — to keep the catalogue up to date and inclusive of new tools and upgrades to existing ones, it is reviewed on a quarterly basis.