This report was jointly produced by United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and International Center on Small Hydro Power (ICSHP) to provide information about small hydropower. It contains data compiled on installed capacity and potential of small hydropower for 152 countries. The Secretariat has in phases of research and data collection, faced many obstacles, from linguistic, data accessibility to the different standards of reporting. There are cases where resource potential of a country is unclear, as there is no globally agreed small hydropower definition and many reports on small hydropower do not always indicate clearly the definition applied.
The World Small Hydropower Development Report 2013 proposes a more detailed policy and barrier analysis to identify critical capacity needs and identification of suitable financing mechanisms. The importance and advantages of small hydropower as the solution to rural electrification and inclusive sustainable industrial development has probably been underestimated, particularly in comparison to other small-scale renewable energies.