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A partnership to support Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) under the auspices of Global Water Partnership

On December 24 and 25, 2016, at the invitation of Henan Water Conservancy Investment Group Co. Ltd, Prof Hao Wang, Standing Vice Chair of GWP China and Prof Yunzhong Jiang, GWP China Secretary General visited Pingyu County and Zhengzhou City to conduct evaluation on local integrated water and environment management projects.

An important facet of the work of the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) is to generate and communicate knowledge. We specifically encourage and support young people to be fully engaged in learning and sharing knowledge on water security and related issues.

Sustainable management of any physical resource requires a good understanding of the distribution and quantities of that resource. Thus, information is highly valuable but it can be complex and hard to manage. Integrated management approaches in particular require massive amounts of spatially and temporally varying data from many different sectors: the quality and quantity of water resources; the geography of the area; the local geology and soil; the human communities; and the land use patterns is all important and interrelated information. One of the biggest challenges in IWRM today is to represent the full scope of this information, of the variables, interactions, and complexity that every water project and policy is confronted with. Analytical tools are needed to interpret the data in a way that makes it usable for decision makers. Models and Decision Support Systems (DSS) do exactly that.

In his address to the participants during the official ceremony of the Integrated Drought Management Project in West Africa (IDMP-WAF), the Chair of GWP-WA, Pr. Abel AFOUDA made a vibrant plea inviting organizations represented at the workshop and other regional institutions and governments in the region to add their voice to the GWP in the campaign for a dedicated "Water Goal" in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be adopted in September 2015 on the occasion of the 70^th ordinary Session of the UN General Assembly in New York.

On September 21 to 25, 2015, GWP China RWP, Standing Committee of the Shaanxi Provincial People's Congress, GWP China Shaanxi PWP and Water Resources Department of Shaanxi Province conducted a on-site survey under the framework of “WACDEP: Investment on Water” to collect the data and information on implementation of national and provincial investment on water projects, particularly on small irrigation areas and rural drinking water security. The “last Km” refers to the full completion of the irrigation structures invested by the national/provincial budgets; the final beneficiaries of the water projects in rural areas are farmers. The issue of “last Km” aims at achieving the best social benefits that can reflect the publicity, fairness, response and effectiveness of policies.

The Gambia Country Water Partnership (GCWP) is the youngest of the CWPs in West Africa (officially launched in December 2011) is yet to complete its accreditation process as a partner of Global Water Partnership (GWP). Some actions were undertaken since 2014 which didn’t get through. To facilitate the exchange process with country partners in The Gambia, the Executive Secretary decided that the Communication manager goes to Banjul and prepares with them all the needed documentation for the accreditation to be done as soon as possible.

The Regional Center AGRHYMET and the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Union brought together experts and research structures at the national level involved in the implementation of the Mékrou Project for a training workshop on hydrological modelling and the L-Moments methodology. "The aim of this workshop is to strengthen the capacities of the actors of the technical management of the Mékrou basin on tools that have been developed in the framework of the Project in order to allow the experts to master these tools and also to perpetuate all the assets of the project in terms of developing tools for replication in other basins. This makes it a very important workshop to ensure the sustainability of tools in the region", according to Dr. Abdou Ali, the Regional Coordinator of the training at AGRHYMET.

GWP-Med provides technical assistance to the UfM secretariat that coordinates/supports the drafting procedure of a roadmap and associated work plan for the work of the WEG.