“An integrated approach to managing and developing the world’s water resources is vital for not only driving world economies, ensuring human well-being and security from hunger, but can also serve as an essential building block for enhancing coherence on adaptation,” said Dr. Ursula Schaefer-Preuss, Chair of GWP at a side event at the Bonn climate change negotiations. “Water is the connecting link because climate impacts are largely felt through the medium of water,” she said.
The South Asia Regional Workshop on lessons learnt in Strategy Implementation on Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) in Water Sector was held on 9 to 10 September 2014 in Colombo, Sri Lanka and it was organised by South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP) in partnership with GWP SAS, and in technical collaboration with UNDP.
A large proportion of Brazil’s population is lacking access to water and sanitation, and development is slow, in particular in rural areas due to lack of funds and political will, but also due to inefficiency in the resources allocation. Action has been taken by the State of Ceará to implement the model called Integrated Rural Water Supply and Sanitation System, illustrating that the most important component of attaining sustainable management is user participation.
The Toledo River basin is increasingly contaminated due to unsustainable agricultural practices, Action was taken through a UNESCO-IHP project aiming to perform an integrated environmental assessment of agricultural and farming production systems located in the Toledo River Basin. By using a multi-criteria approach, it was possible to highlight the interactions and use of natural capital, human-driven resources, and ecosystem services supporting agricultural and farming production systems.
Groundwater is a critical source of fresh drinking water for the citizens and also supplies irrigated agriculture in Shaanxi Province. Groundwater is also important in sustaining streams, lakes, wetlands, and associated ecosystems. In the meantime , effects of climate change on groundwater resources are closely linked to other global change drivers, including population growth, urbanization and land-use change, coupled with other socio-economic and political trends.
The Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) has embarked on a new and exciting initiative, designed to develop practical and user-friendly tools for climate resilient decision-making, focused on the water sector in the Caribbean. The new initiative will be undertaken as part of the GWP-C Water, Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP) for the Caribbean.
The Maltese islands experience acute water shortage as an area. To address this, leakage control has been developed to become a strategically important component for water resource management, and has been used to reach an optimum economic balance between water supply and water demand. The key lesson is that leakage management is an effective supply side action to increase efficiency in water use leading, and can be used as a strategic tool.
The Five Year (2014-2018) Strategic Plan for Burundi Water Partnership was presented to development partners on 25 September, 2014 in Bujumbura. The conference that was opened by the Assistant to the Minister in charge of water (MEEATU) aimed to create a platform to raise funds for the implementation of activities contained in the different project proposals of the strategic plan for water resource management and climate resilience.
About 120 representatives of competent institutions, authorities, regional and national NGOs, academia, representatives of the private sector from the Drin Riparians as well as international organizations and donor countries participated in the 2nd Drin Basin Multi-Stakeholders Conference (Tirana, Albania, 10 -11 December 2013).