On Friday 24 April, Albania, Greece, Kosovo*, Montenegro and North Macedonia will be endorsing the Strategic Action Programme for the sustainable management of the Drin river basin, with over 100 agreed actions to tackle common challenges and promote sustainable development in the region.
Social inclusion and gender equality are long-established, core values of the GWP Network and manifested in the GWP Gender Strategy and the GWP Gender Action Piece. In a series of inter-regional discussions, GWP Senior Gender & Social Inclusion Specialist Liza Debevec sets out to identify what GWP as an institution can do to apply the concepts in these documents. Her first discussion is with Amy Sullivan and Andrew Takawira, who are both involved in a large Pan-African project on gender transformative water and climate investment. The discussion topic is institutional leadership and commitment, which is the first of 4 action areas in the Gender Action Piece. Their message is clear: leadership makes all the difference.
Today’s water challenges need all water interests to be at the table to jointly diagnose, discuss, and develop shared solutions – including the private sector. Over the past years, GWP has been able to build experience in engaging the private sector. To further develop this work, engagement with the private sector cuts across all three GWP Anchor Areas (climate resilience, Sustainable Development Goals, and transboundary water cooperation) in the GWP 2020-2025 Strategy.
GWP, GEF IW:Learn and Partners have opened a MOOC on “Governance for Transboundary Freshwater Security.” The aim is to bring together countries that share freshwater resources – giving them the skills to cooperate so that the shared resource is managed sustainably for the benefit of each country’s population. The self-paced MOOC is available on the SDG Academy platform - it is free and open to everyone - but especially designed for professionals who manage and make decisions about transboundary waters in ministries and river basin organisations, as well as young professionals and future leaders in transboundary waters, including undergraduate and graduate students.
After taking part in the GWPO Working in Virtual Environment Training (WiVe) ahead of the Virtual Regional Days 2020 , Global Water Partnership Central Africa (GWP-CAf) decided to share the knowledge acquired during this training with all Country Water Partnerships within its network.
GWP West Africa held its statutory meetings in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from 23 to 26 September on the theme "Accelerating progress in IWRM implementation to achieve water-related SDGs in West Africa: challenges, innovative approaches and roles of partnerships". These include the meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee on 23 September; the Steering Committee on 24 September 2019; and the Assembly of Partners (AP) on 26 September 2019. On 25 September, the regional dialogue was held in collaboration with the Ministry of Water and Sanitation of Burkina Faso, the ECOWAS Water Resources Management Centre and the West African Monetary and Economic Union (UEMOA).