As one of the session convenors, the Global Water Partnership will focus on financing investments in water and the pivotal role of water for climate change adaptation.
With five years to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target date of 2015, the conference will discuss challenges faced and progress made across the African continent towards achieving the goals and targets for water and sanitation.
During the second and third day, parallel sessions (Four Sub-Themes) are planned as follows:
- Financing investment in water for growth and development
- Water and urbanisation
- Water, Climate and Development,
- Institutional Development and Capacity Building
GWP is involved in two of the sub-themes below and is a co-convenor of a session on Partnership for green growth : water, agriculture and ecosystem management. All programmes and more information about the sessions are available on the right hand side.
1. Financing investment in water for growth and development
The focus of this session will be on:
- How to address financial gaps through efficiency gains.
- Experiences and lessons learned from three country case studies on financing water resources management.
- Presentation and discussion of non-traditional sources of financing water
- Four barriers to financing (risk, budgets, transboundary, and governance) and suggest how they can be overcome.
- Examine and give examples of new or non-mainstream opportunities for financing water.
- Discussions around drivers and bottlenecks to getting the most out of existing capital and operational finance.
Lead Convenors: African Development Bank, AMCOW and Global Water Partnership
Co-Convenors: African Water Facility, World Bank-Water and Sanitation Programme
Contributor: EU Water Initiative-Finance Working Group
2. Water, Climate and Development Challenge
Compounding the challenges of population growth and migration into dry and urban areas, is climate change, which may have the greatest impact. Many countries lack adequate water infrastructure given climate change risks. In addition, Africa has climates that are among the most variable in the world. Floods and droughts occur in the same area within months of each other. These events lead to famine and widespread disruption of GDP and socio-economic development.
GWP has been invited to lead the sub-theme on climate change because of its high involvement in the climate change and adaptation dialogue linked to the UNFCCC negotiations, both in Africa and at the global level.
This sub-theme will discuss:
- Adaptation to climate change to support national development.
- The need for integrating water security and climate change in national development planning processes.
- The required investments in water infrastructure and better climate information as well as development of capacity of institutions to build resilience.
- The relationships among water, climate and national development including the bottlenecks and opportunities for progress.
- Discussions on water infrastructure will receive insights from the 10-year anniversary of the World Commission on Dams.
- Case studies on vulnerability and gender mainstreaming will be presented.
- Appropriate trade offs among agriculture, hydropower and other sectors.
- Opportunities for adaptation through shared river basins, accessing climate finance and appropriate technology.
Lead Convener: Global Water Partnership (GWP) (www.gwp.org)
The abstract of the sub-theme is available here.
Abstrait en français.
Venue: UN Conference Centre, ECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Conference website: www.africawaterweek.org