The Mediterranean water community has traditionally been very active at the World Water Forum, the global water community’s largest regular interface with an outreach to actors outside the water box, strongly voicing core messages and highlighting experiences from the region. This contribution has been systematically concretized for each Forum through a dedicated Mediterranean Cross-Continental Preparatory Process.
“Although water is central to development, its value is often overlooked. It is thus essential that this national consultation helps to ensure that water is properly reflected in any post-2015 agenda. Moreover water is tied to most development themes – such as food, health, energy. So it is essential to recognize the obvious linkages with these other thematic consultations”
Zagreb, 3 July 2015. Today, the ICPDR Stakeholder Conference “Voice of the Danube” has convened in the Croatian capital. Over 80 stakeholders from a broad range of backgrounds stood the heat and expressed their views on the draft management plans for the Danube River.
Margaret Catley Carlson who was the Chair and the Patron of GWP visited GWP China Secretariat and its Host Institute, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research (IWHR) on May 16, 2015, in Beijing.
GWP-Med organises a workshop within the framework of the ‘Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector’ Project, in Athens on 2-4 March 2015, aiming to strengthen the Secretariat’s, as well as its partners’, capacity on mainstreaming gender and corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in water policy-related work.
Water is a source of conflict around the Berki River Basin in Ethiopia, predominantly a consequence of a lack of IWRM awareness and an institutional framework. Action was taken to implement an IWRM pilot project to account for different stakeholder interests, resulting in the development and adoption of the Berki Basin IWRM. Key lessons drawn from the project include the importance of capacity building, consensus building, and the importance of decentralised multi-stakeholder platforms for conflict management.
A one day workshop brought together around 20 journalists from various media houses and freelance journalists in The Gambia at the end of July. The topic was the ratification process of the 1997 United Nations Watercourses Convention, and how journalists can contribute to this process.
The National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS) that was adopted in July 2014 was officially launched by the Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa on the 19th of November 2015 at Rainbow Towers Hotel in Harare, Zimbabwe. The launch was attended by senior government officials, representatives from different organisations in the water sector and the local leadership drawn from the 9 Provinces around the country. The launch came at a time when Zimbabwe is stepping up efforts towards climate change adaptation and mitigation as witnessed by the development of the Strategy and the Intended National Determined Contributions (INDCs) to support the process.
With global change projections pointing to increasing water scarcity and drought in the Mediterranean, which are bound to cause significant environmental and socio-economic impacts, the development of a new management approach for water basins by integrating scientific thinking with sociological considerations seems essential.
Today, in celebration of the International Francophonie Day, the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Secretary-General of the Organisation international de la Francophonie (OIF), encourages francophone youth to get engaged and learn about a series of youth consultations on water and climate change that OIF has launched in preparation for the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21).