Up to 300 participants from more than 30 countries were gathered for the Gender, Water and Development Conference, 7-11 November in East London, South Africa. The conference is organised as a step towards an on-going journey to change equality, equity and development in the water sector.
One of the critical challenges facing the water sector is climate change. Studies have shown that Uganda is highly vulnerable to climate change and variability. This means that the economy and wellbeing of its people are tightly bound to climate. This has been demonstrated by increasing climate variability and occurrences of floods and droughts over the last two decades. These changes are likely to have significant implications for water sources, agriculture, food security, and soils.
Within the framework of the celebration of the International Youth Day 2016 under the theme “The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production”, some leaders of Cameroon Youth organizations involved in protecting the environment launched on the 13th of August the process of the establishment of a network entitled “Youth network for wetlands”.
This launching was made during a workshop on the approval of the logical framework document of the network.
The workshop itself was organized by Water For Life Cameroon with the support of GWP-CAf. It took place at the GWP-CAf Secretariat in Yaounde, Cameroon.
20 leaders from 10 youth organizations such as Water For Life Cameroon (W4L), Women In Development (WID), Jeunes Volontaires de l’Environnement (JVE), Centre de Recherche sur la Forêt et l’Environnement, Institut des Relations Internationales du Cameroun (IRIC), AJEVOH Cameroun, Cameroon Youth Initiative for Rural Development (CAMYIRD), Young Professional Platform for Agricultural Development (YPARD), United Voice to Serve Forest and Environment (USFE) attended the meeting.
During this meeting, Global Water Partnership Central Africa (GWP-CAf) shared its experiences on networking: GWP as a multi-players network with a vision and mission. This presentation aimed at strengthening the participants’ understanding of the structure and function of the network they wanted to establish in order to mutualize their effort in protecting the wetlands and underlining the benefits the communities will obtain from wetlands and also guiding youth leaders as a compass in networking.
The fourth capacity building workshop was held from July 28 to 29, 2015 in Ouagadougou. This workshop aimed to strengthen the capacity of planners and policy makers who are beneficiaries of the program to ensure the monitoring of progress and lessons learned from the implementation of the Strategic Framework for water security and resilient development to change climate produced by AMCOW.
From December 14 to 16, 2015, the “Regional Workshop on South-South Cooperation in Flood Management” was jointly organized by GWP China and GWPO in Guangdong, China.
From November 4 to 5, 2015, GWP China Secretariat, in cooperation with GWP China Hebei and Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, with the support of Zhang River Administration that governs all issues related to Zhang River running cross Hebei Province and Henan Province, visited She County of Hebei Province and Linzhou County of Henan Province to get to know how they deal with the challenges of water shortage they faced due to climate change, including water use conflict, integrated use of different water resources and harmonious development between water resources and local eco-society.
Within the context of implementation of WACDEP in central Africa, GWP Cameroon in collaboration with GWP-Caf organized in Douala, Cameroon, from August 26th - to 28th 2015 WACDEP project capacity building workshop for national institutions and water organizations on “project preparation related to water security and climate resilience”.
The 3 days’ workshop brought together planners in ministries from Cameroon, Chad and Gabon and water professionals from Country Water Partnerships like Cameroon, Central African Republic and Sao Tome and Principe.
The main objective of the workshop was, on the one hand to introduce stakeholders the different project preparation key steps, integrating water security and climate resilience in conformity with the funders’ requirements, to know better the financial institutions and also to plead for integrating water security and climate resilience into development planning process and on the other hand to develop no/low regret investment and financing strategies
This article is part of a wider coverage of the “MENA Focus” events, a set of four regional sessions dedicated to the Middle East & North Africa, officially launched at the Stockholm World Water Week 2016, alongside the Regional Days for Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) had been selected and serves as the overall coordinator for these “MENA Focus” events. The sessions were organized in partnership with a number of international regional institutions and organisations. “World Café 2016: Water, Growth, Stability” was the last of the four sessions, held on the 31st of August.