FAO and its partners have been preparing draft voluntary guidelines to provide practical guidance on responsible governance of tenure of land, fisheries and forests as a means of alleviating hunger and poverty, enhancing the environment, supporting national and local economic development, and reforming public administration. A process of widespread participation of stakeholders through a series of regional and thematic consultation meetings as well as an electronic consultation resulted in a First Draft of the Voluntary Guidelines.

The present paper is written as part of the overall Voluntary Guidelines consultation and development process and is a contribution to the subsequent preparation of the Gender Technical Guide. It contextualises and defines gender for the Voluntary Guidelines, discusses what governance of tenure means from a gender perspective and identifies and analyses key issues and themes. It then summarises recommendations relevant to gender before drawing some conclusions for the development process of the Voluntary Guidelines.

Information on water use is required for political, economic and academic decision making on issues affecting everyone?s life. Owing to fi nancial constraints, it is diffi cult to have complete and comprehensive information on everything related to water. Techniques and methodologies are, therefore, used to affordably maximize control. To improve understanding of the different techniques and methodologies used to generate information, the AQUASTAT team sent thematic questionnaires to approximately 170 countries in April 2009.