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The 1^st Regional Conference of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled project Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector was organised on 28-30 October 2014, in Athens, Greece, by the Global Water Partnership- Mediterranean (GWP-Med), in close collaboration with the EU funded Sustainable Water Integrated Management-Support Mechanism (SWIM-SM) project. It convened more than 110 decision makers; representatives of government; civil society; the private sector; international organisations; donors and financing institutions.

The Interactive workshop on South Asia Drought Monitoring System (SADMS) held in Dhaka, Bangladesh on Monday, 20 April 2015.

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) has sponsorship available for eligible participants to complete the online course in Integrated and Adaptive Water Resources Planning, Management and Governance offered by McGill University’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Water governance remains a key challenge in the Mediterranean. Efforts of countries focus on improving policies making and action planning, institutional settings, law and regulation, enforcement mechanisms, innovative financing, application of cost recovery and polluter pays principle, etc. To achieve sustainable models of development, water must be mainstreamed into other sectoral policies such as agriculture, land planning and use, energy, industry, tourism and trade. Political will is key for making these happen. The importance of cross-cutting issues, such as gender, equity, poverty and rights, is increasingly recognized but is still relatively poorly tackled.

Thirty participants from 5 Middle East & Nortnern Africa (MENA) countries - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia - gathered in Tunisia, on 8-19 February 2015, in a course held in the framework of the 4-year MENA Integrated Sustainable Coastal Development Training Programme (MENA ISCD), financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and jointly implemented by NIRAS Natura AB and the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med).

A regional consultation workshop took place in Tunis, on September 11^th 2014, aimed at supporting the development of the ten-year strategy (2015-2025) and the detailed five-year action plan (2015-2020) for the African Network for Basin Organisations (ANBO) to become an effective tool in strengthening and promoting institutional management mechanisms for shared water resources in Africa.

A training workshop was organized in Tunis, in the framework of the Water, Climate, Development Program for Africa (WACDEP), on 20-23 October; the second one out of a series of five training workshops composing the capacity building program “The Economics of Adaptation, Water Security and Climate Resilient Development”. This series of workshops follows the Framework cycle developed under WACDEP for water security and climate resilience.

The National Adaptation Plan Global Support Programme (NAP-GSP)/GWP Joint Mission aiming at supporting the National Adaptation Planning process in Madagascar and suggesting next steps and actions was held from 9^th to 19^th March 2015 in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

The Matura watershed is located in the eastern region of Trinidad. The major threats to watershed degradation originate from anthropogenic activities that are unsustainably executed. Several mitigation measures were initiated by the regulatory agencies that constantly monitor the watershed as well as the community-based organisation, Nature Seekers.

An Expert Task Force of the joint GWP/OECD project “Global Dialogue on Water Security and Sustainable Growth” has presented provisional results of research into the economics of water security. Although still a work in progress, some striking patterns stand out, and the experts believe this could be a game changer in the quest for a dedicated water goal in the post-2015 development agenda, as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are to be decided upon.