Africa is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change due to a number of interlinked challenges, including land degradation, poverty, and extreme weather events. The continent also has a low adaptive capacity, in part due to financial and technical constrains, and a heavy reliance on rain-fed agriculture.
On 7 October, GWP Chair Howard Bamsey was the keynote speaker in the second of a series of webinars organized by the Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) on the road towards the 4th Asia-Pacific Water Summit in 2022. He spoke to the topic of "Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Investors: More Risks, More Opportunities through better Governance." His speech focused on how the world can deal with the potentially catastrophic risks of climate change by changing the pattern of investment in the global economy, towards climate-friendly activities.
The Country Water Partnership (CWP) of Mali which is benefitting from a financing to help in the implementation of the IWRM Plan funded by DANIDA visited in December the CWPs in Burkina Faso and Benin.
The regional organisation Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean (GWP-Med | www.gwpmed.org) and the Energy and Water Agency (EWA | www.energywateragency.gov.mt) of Malta are organizing two back-to-back Capacity Building Workshops in November 2019 in Malta: 12-13/11: ‘Communicating Water Trends & Innovation to Engage Locals and Tourists’, and 13-14/11: 'Non-Conventional Water Resources Management: Local Solutions'.
GWP and Wuhan International Water Law Academy are co-organisers of a 6-part series called the "Transboundary Freshwater Security Governance Train." The second session took place on 16 February on “Ecosystems, International Law, and Transboundary Water Cooperation”. The event gathered over 100 participants, led by a panel of international experts who agreed that ecosystems protection has been gaining increased political acceptance and technical understanding in recent years.
The GWP communication officers met in Beijing, China from 13 to 20 October 2018 for their traditional annual training and experience sharing meeting hosted by GWP China.
On 11 September 2019, GWP, together with the World Bank and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), launched a new working paper: “Framework for the Assessment of Benefits of Action/Cost of Inaction (BACI) for Drought Preparedness.” The launch took place on the Drought Preparedness Day at the 14th UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP14), held in New Delhi, India.
Since November 2018, the Country Water Partnership of Mali had initiated a consultation framework with the various stakeholders to address the dangers facing water resources and the lack of reliable results of the actions undertaken by the various structures involved in Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) in the country.