Asia and the Pacific has made impressive progress towards achieving several sustainable development goals including poverty alleviation, education and economic growth. At the same time, the region needs to accelerate concerted efforts across all sectors to achieve the SDGs by 2030. In the face of transboundary challenges such as climate change and natural disasters, energy security and connectivity, ecosystem degradation on land and in our oceans, and promoting sustainable equitable trade, regional cooperation can support and complement the effectiveness of national mechanisms and be a link between global goals and country level commitments.
Water is the interconnector of all other sectors; Therefore, it is not possible to support sectors development without understanding the role of water as one of the important development foundation. As important as it is, water is still considered as social goods and do not have value by development actors. This condition has created a very complex challenge for the development of water sector itself. In Asia Pacific region, the complexities of water challenges then urged the establishment of The Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) in Asia Pacific region.
More than 100 Members of Parliament, media and representatives of civil society working on environment and water issues got together from 22-24 November 2017, in Nicosia, to get informed, exchange views and provide suggestions on key Mediterranean processes on environment and water in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Participants originated from Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia along with the members of the United Nations Environment, UNESCO, UNECE, the Union for Mediterranean (UfM) and League of Arab States (LAS).
The guided tour took place on Thursday, November 02, 2017 on the demonstration site of the “Multifunctional agro-forestry park” in Komki Ipala. The aim was to make the IDM platform core group discover the system of defense and allow the group to observe results obtained (performance, efficiency, etc.) using this system.
GWP West Africa new Executive Secretary Armand HOUANYE was officially introduced by the former one Dam MOGBANTE to the Director General of water resources (DGRE) of Burkina Faso, Mr. Serge TRAORE, on 21 November 2017.
For transboundary water collaboration of the Lancang-Mekong River Basin countries, GWP China Region and GWP Southeast Region, with the GWPO support, have set up a partnership with the Lancang-Mekong Water Resources Cooperation Center (LMWRCC). It has an initiative harvest in early December 2017.
Establishing strong partnerships is key to delivering GWP strategy and the implementation of programmes, says Mr Alex Simalabwi Global Water Partnership Southern Africa Executive Secretary and Head Africa Coordination Unit.
Bangkok, Thailand (12/8/2017). Southeast Asia is particularly vulnerable to climate change for several reasons. First and foremost, in many of these countries large portions of the population live in poverty. The proportion of the population living below the poverty line ranges from the lowest in Thailand at 10.2% to 53% in Lao PDR (ADB 2008). The poor are particularly vulnerable to climate change, as they lack the resources necessary for many types of adaptive actions. With its extensive coastlines, Southeast Asia is also home to many millions of people living at low elevations that are at risk from sea level rise. Moreover, ongoing social and environmental challenges in the region – notably growing income inequality, rising food prices, and widespread deforestation – contribute to social vulnerability and make climate change more likely to bring significant harms.
Global Water Partnership work on water and climate is conducted mainly under Water, Climate and Development Programmme (WACDEP) . Actions are taking to support governments and key institutions as they work towards building water security as part of better resilience to climate change. This included providing support to national adaptation planning, project preparation, investment planning and global policy process.
