International donors have poured money into developing Nepal’s irrigation infrastructures since the late-1950s, but results remain only partly successful. At present, irrigation infrastructures have been developed to serve 1.331 million ha but the irrigation potential is estimated to about 1.76 million ha. The Irrigation Water Resources Management Project is one of the latest international aid efforts aimed to developing the irrigation facilities while improving Nepal’s institutional framework pertaining to water infrastructure projects. The importance of adequate and timely finance, well-defined administrative roles and institutional capacity building are part of the key lessons learned from this project.
The First High Level Ministerial Panel on Responding to Climate and Environmental Challenges in South East Europe (SEE) took place on 1st April 2016, in Podgorica, in the framework of the South East Europe Strategy 2020 and the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC).
GWP and key partners organised a training opportunity on Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) in Mongolia at the end of September. A new toolkit with training modules for IUWM were used for the first time, to test their functionality in a real environment.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day (8 March), Global Water Partnership Central and Eastern Europe has interviewed women in the water community across the Network on their journey to become successful in their professions, how to overcome obstacles they face as women, and also recommendations to other women.
Under Water and Climate Development Programme (WACDEP), Myanmar WACDEP activity title is Development of the National Water Policy and Water Law with Integrating Water Security and Climate Resilience Aspects into Investment Planning and Decision Making Process. Its goal is to point out the integration of water security and climate resilience aspects to be included in the national water policy and water law.
With aiming the goal of the activity, the works have been initiated with making two assessment studies: Assessment of the National Water Policy of Myanmar (NWPM) and Assessment of the Current Situation of Water Security and Climate Resilience Aspects in Myanmar. After that, identification of these aspects to be integrated in NWPM, how to implement the integration process by means of consultative meeting which will be held among multi-stakeholders from water sector. Finally, selecting and prioritizing the action plans for integrating water security and climate resilience aspects into the NWPM.
To implement the one of action plans as a pilot study which has been selected from already identified National Adaptation Programs of Actions (NAPA). It is selected from water resources sector according to the prioritization of NAPA action plans. Accordingly, selection has been done for a particular area region within the country for pilot study to develop regional rainfall-runoff relationships. For that, Magwe Region has been selected for pilot study and collecting available data including historic records for rainfall and runoff data of streams that are situated in the region. Based on these collected data, regional rainfall and runoff relationships will be developed and these relationships will be given as input to identify and support the country flood early warning system establishment to be able to ensure and making decision for sustainable water management
The GWP Technical Committee has launched three new Technical Focus Papers and introduced a Background Paper. This took place at an event in Stockholm on 28 August. The event was live streamed and a recording of this will be available shortly.
Since December 2015, Global Water Partnership in Central and Eastern Europe develops a project proposal that aims to shift existing water paradigm by an innovative wastewater management in the rural areas.