The workshop intended to help increase capacity of policy makers and technical people for effective decision-making by tackling climate change adaptation for sustainable management and development of water resources.
The workshop, themed “Mainstreaming Climate Change Adaptation into Water Resources”, was held from 13th to 16th of September 2017 alongside the NAP Regional Expo.
The training workshop, facilitated by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), targeted governments in Asia. It was attended by representatives from ministries of Water, Environment, Energy, Local Government, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, Planning Development and Finance from Asian developing countries. Other participants of the workshop were key resource people from partner organizations.
“The workshop’s overall objective is to increase the capacity of policy makers and technical people for effective decision-making by tackling climate change adaptation for sustainable management and development of water resources” said Armand Houanye, GWP-CU Technical Advisor for Water Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP); and Integrated Sanitation and Water Programme for Resilient Cities – Africa.
Coming from a water security and climate change resilience development perspective, GWP shared on Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM), Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) and Mainstreaming Water Security and Climate Resilience into Policy Processes. Together with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), GWP developed a manual on flood and drought management for use during the training workshop.
The six-session workshop focused on increasing the participants’ knowledge and understanding of the importance of water resources as well as evaluating current guidelines, tools and methods of tracking water-related climate change risks. Further, the workshop also facilitated the exchange of lessons learnt on mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development planning, based on country experiences.
The NAP process is an interactive and participatory process which supports countries in their comprehensive medium- and long-term climate adaptation planning. The flexibility of the process enables it to build on each country’s existing adaptation activities in the process of reducing vulnerability to climate change impacts and building adaptive capacity.
The process aims at supporting governments to integrate climate change adaptation into relevant new and existing policies, programmes and activities, in particular development planning processes and strategies, within all relevant sectors and at different levels.
GWP is the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW)’s implementing partner for WACDEP in Africa where it initially started. The programme, which now has global presence, aims at promoting water security as a key element of sustainable development of countries and regions as well as to contribute to climate change resilience for economic growth and human security. Through WACDEP, GWP supports countries in developing their country national adaptation plans (NAPs) as well as sectorial NAPs.