Myanmar Water Partnership’s Partners General Meeting was held on the 2nd December 2016 at International Business Centre, Yangon. Myanmar Water Partnership (MmWP) is one of the Country Water Partnerships (CWP) of the GWP Network. It is one of the country members of the Global Water Partnership - South East Asia (GWP-SEA). It liaises with its partner organisations composed of governmental departments, agencies, services, academic and research institutions, business, social entities, professional associations, NGOs and water users in the water sector and its related management areas. It is made up of all GWP partners in Myanmar and who abide by the GWP network principles and values.
Among out of previous 17 Partner organizations, 4 organizations are merged into 2 organizations and in total 15 organizations as Partner organizations presently. In the general meeting, among 17 partner organizations, representatives from 13 partner organizations attended the meeting. Myanmar Water Partnership’s (MmWP) status and progress was presented by Daw Hla Oo Nwe, Alternate Steering Committee member of GWP-SEA representing MmWP. The principal objective of MmWP is to promote the Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) approach in Myanmar so as to ensure the sustainable management of water resources.
The MmWP is guided by the national apex body for water related matters, that is, Myanmar Water Resources Committee (MWRC) during the former governments’ periods. The MmWP is established since 2007 as a CWP (Interim Stage). It is hosted by the Irrigation and Water Utilization Management Department (formerly as Irrigation Department) under the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation (MoALI) formerly as the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MoAI).
It was announced in the general meeting that Accreditation of GWP Myanmar as “Country Water Partnership” was received on the 10th August 2016. Even though MmWP is in interim stage and formed as a country level network of a semi-governmental nature. Now in the current situation of the politically transformed period, it is the right time to upgrade its status.
Collaboration, coordination and cooperation are very important for the networking. Knowing each other, learning by knowledge exchange and frequent meetings can solve various issues in integrated way and avoid doing the overlapping activities. In the working level (managerial level), data sharing, collaboration and cooperation is effectively done in activities of MmWP. To promote wider participation and decision makers’ involvement including their understanding, more advocacy is needed for the GWP policy that will support good achievements for the water sector.
MmWP is working since SEA TEC period and up to now its activities heavily rely on GWP seed money allocate through GWP-SEA and other financial resources are coming as in kind contributions of its partner organizations. MmWP and GWP-SEA are limited capacity in fund raising in general was also pointed out to the partners. Due to the budget limitation, partners can meet two to three times per year during the course of activities that are performed but the general assembly of all partner organizations cannot be done except in the GWP-SEA general partners meeting that was held in Myanmar in 2013. We do have all partners meetings three times in 2008 for discussions and adoption of the MmWP Statue and formation of MmWP as an interim stage. Updated contact person and contact address were also requested to the partners.
Dr. Zaw Lwin Tun, Steering Committee Member of GWP-SEA representing MmWP presented on the way forward for the future of MmWP. Firstly, the status of MmWP is in interim stage and formed as a country level network of a semi-governmental nature. He also presented about the future plan for the formation of MmWP in full-fledged stage. This can be realized by coming future, serving the MmWP as the multi-stakeholder platform for sustainable management of water resources in Myanmar. After that information concerning with Learning Delta’s Initiative and explanation on Delta Alliance and Delta Coalition were presented. All the representatives of MmWP partners agree to contribute their input to the programme of Learning Delta Initiative. Finally with these agreement and commitments, the general partners’ meeting was successfully accomplished.