In preparation for a Youth Engagement Strategy, GWP consulted one of its Partner organisations: the Water Youth Network (WYN). The Strategy was launched in Stockholm on 25 August 2015. Some WYN voices were captured in a video connected to this event.
Water resources are sensitive to variation in climatic pattern. Climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather event including droughts, floods and tropical storms. It is a fact in Indonesia that sustainability of freshwater is already threatened by severe watershed degradation, pollution, and over-allocation. Furthermore climate change will aggravate these threats to a point of irreversibility if no counter measures.
An International Water Law workshop took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 16-20 November. The event promoted international cooperation and good transboundary water resources governance in the Amazon and Rio de la Plata basins.
Right at the heart of Namibia, “the land of the brave”, in the capital Windhoek was the venue for the 7th SADC Multi- stakeholder Water Dialogue held from the 29th to the 30th of September, 2015. Held under the theme, “Watering Development in SADC: The central role of water in driving industrialization” the dialogue was attended by 150 delegates from across the region representing the water sector, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), cooperating and development partners, academia, the media, and other relevant stakeholders from non-water entities (energy, agriculture, industrialization). The delegates, of which a good number were youth were brought together to deliberate the role that water will play in driving industrialization in the region.
On World Water Day, 22 March 2015, GWP Central and Eastern Europe is realeasing a new video in support of a dedicated water goal in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda.
From the 7th to 10th September, 2015 was held in N’djamena, Chad a training workshop for staff and experts of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) on IWRM for transboundary water resources management.
Organized by the Department of Natural Resources Management of the LCBC in collaboration with GWP Central Africa (GWP CAf), the workshop brought together fifteen participants from the secretariat of the LCBC.
The objective was to strengthen their understanding of the IWRM concept and its principles, and also develop their capacity in using some specific IWRM planning tools with a special focus on development and management of transboundary water resources. It also aimed at ensuring a common understanding of the concepts, principles and planning process of IWRM among key staff of the LCBC secretariat.
The Botswana SADC Water Week was held from 28-30 April 2015 in Gaborone at the Cresta President Hotel (Journalist training and Youth Forum) and the Cresta Lodge for the consultative forum. During the youth forum, the youth agreed on setting up a structure that will implement youth activities at country level and this will be housed by the Botswana Water Partnership Secretariat.
A team of GWP-WA and CWP Burkina PNE had on June 11, 2015 a visit to assess the level of implementation of work on the site of the WACDEP demonstration project in Burkina Faso. This project involves the drip irrigation techniques for the efficient management of agricultural water for the benefit of vulnerable populations in the municipality of Loumbila in the center of the country.
Since the last visit in April 2015 there has been plowing work, the installation of some drip irrigation and water pumping equipment with solar energy, among others.
WaterInnEU project, coordinated by Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Application (CREAF) in Spain, started in March 2015.