During his opening address to the Conference, Deputy Director General Werner Burkart summarized some of the IAEA’s activities in the area of isotopes in environment.

• The programme on Water Resources continues to play a major role in developing and facilitating the use of isotope techniques in climate and climate change studies.
• For the last forty years, the global network of isotopes in precipitation has provided researchers worldwide with isotope data that have been used for studying relationships between precipitation and climate parameters and for evaluating the validity of climate models. This network, which has been operating in collaboration with the World Meteorology Organization (WMO), has been recognized by the scientific community as an invaluable source of data for isotope applications.
• A memorandum of understanding was recently signed between the IAEA and the WMO to provide stronger organizational support to the global network of isotopes in precipitation.
• A joint international programme on isotopes in hydrology is being formalized with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).