This workshop will allow a comprehensive presentation of the activities/results of the scientific component of the Mekrou project, and also the installation of all developed or adapted tools (SWAT, EPIC, REFRAN CV, AquaSurvey, PostgreSQL, E-Water), on the computers of all participants and on new machines for scientific and technical structures (AGRHYMET, NBA, and 1 for each country).
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.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and Global Water Partnership (GWP) are increasing their long-standing cooperation to strengthen water resource management at a time when climate change, population shifts and environmental degradation are leading to more stress on water supplies and more water-related hazards.
The SADC Secretariat has been holding a series of workshops for the transboundary River Basin Organisations (RBOs) in the region since 2006. The workshops are organised with the aim of using RBOs as a vehicle for strengthening regional integration and have served as a key tool for implementing SADC’s Revised Regional Protocol on Shared Watercourses (2000).
In December 2016, China issued a document to implement a river chief system nationwide. A river chief, as the name suggests, is responsible for the management and protection of watercourses, as well as preventing pollution and restoring the water ecology. Government officials are hired as river chiefs at provincial, city, county and township levels. Heads of provincial regions will be general chiefs that are responsible for all rivers and lakes in the region.
Dr. Monika Weber-Fahr, GWP’s new Executive Secretary has visited West Africa in the last week of June. She had a stay in Dakar, Senegal to take part in the World Water Forum’s Board of Governors’ meeting, and in the Climate KIC strategy meeting.
“…The lack of regularly informed monitoring and evaluation system of water resources and water services challenges considerably the decision making process for water management in Mauritania… The Action Plan will be an important document to advocate for funds mobilizations…”, with these statements, the General Secretary of the Ministry of Hydraulics and Sanitation, M. Mohamed Ould Abdallahi Salem Ould Ahmed Doua, opened the joint workshop organised by GWP-Med and UNICEF Mauritania on February, 7th 2018.
“Water resources management is a learning process”, said GWP Executive Secretary Monika Weber-Fahr while on a visit to South America. She spent 26-29 March meeting with representatives of the key water agencies of Argentina and Chile. Both countries are Sponsoring Partners of GWP, and Weber-Fahr’s visits strengthened a close working relationship with the countries.
