Job title: Development Communications Officer
Reporting to: Regional CoordinatorBased: Entebbe, Uganda
The Maasai live in an area of Kenya that has no water in the rivers for half a year. To address the water scarcity, the Water for the Maasai project was initiated. In this project, the Maasai, the donor and the NGO work closely to cooperate in the key issues of education, training and long-term guidance. The key lesson is that it takes time to build trust among donors, NGOs and native populations.
In the village of Parakar, untreated wastewater contaminated agricultural lands, jeopardised food safety and posed severe health risks. In 2010, the Parakar community supported by partners from the Country Water Partnerships of Armenia initiated and developed a demonstration pilot project for domestic wastewater treatment. Particular attention was given to community involvement. This case illustrates the value of small scale solutions.
Preceded by a series of regional workshops in Africa, Latin America, South-East Asia and Central Asia organized by IUCN and IWA since 2012, the Symposium on Infrastructure Solutions in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus was taken place at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, starting on Thursday 13 November and ending on Saturday 15 November, 2014, in Beijing. GWP China was formally invited to be the co-sponsor of the symposium jointly with IUCN and IWA .
GWP CACENA Regional Council Meeting was held on 23-25 December 2013 in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Regional Council Members considered the following main five items:
- Joining the Country Water Partnership of Mongolia into GWP CACENA network;
- GWP CACENA regional work program and budget for 2014;
- GWP CACENA Calendar of Events for 2014;
- Climate Change Adaptation Program for the period 2013-2015 (funded by GWPO);
- Organizational issues.
Coinciding with the 2013 World Water Week in Stockholm, GWP presents three new policy briefs on critical water management issues. The topics are Integrated Urban Water Management, Transboundary Water Cooperation and the Economic Value of a Water Secure World.
Global institutions are still in the learning phase when it comes to successfully managing water and energy in an integrated manner as part of the quest for sustainable development. According to World Bank official Daryl Fields, understanding the water-energy nexus is critical for addressing growth and human development, urbanisation and climate change, but many policy-makers are finding it challenging to transform this concept into a reality. Fields, who is also a Technical Committee member of the Global Water Partnership, was speaking at a recent meeting of the GWP Consulting Partners, held in Trinidad for the first time.
The round table "Role of water for sustainable development of Kazakhstan" was held on 4 April 2014 in Astana within the national consultations on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the National Program on Water Resources Development to Post-2015 in Kazakhstan.
Climate Change is expected to have severe impacts on river discharges and water quality and quantity. In an effort to proactively find solutions to the current and future challenges of water, the project Environmental state and sustainable management of Hungarian-Slovakian transboundary groundwater bodies was initiated. The key lesson is the importance of evaluating all resources, including the links between groundwater and surface water.