Following the WACDEP Africa Technical Coordination and Annual Programming Meeting which was held from the 15th to the 17th of September 2014 at Meikles Hotel, Harare, Zimbabwe a training workshop on Project Preparation and Financing was held from the 18th to the 19th September, 2014. The training workshop brought together 35 participants which included the WACDEP Africa Coordination Unit; WACDEP Project Preparation National Consultants, WACDEP Work Package 4 (WP 4) National and Regional Partner Institutions and WACDEP Country Programme Managers.
The sixth statutory meeting of the Assembly of Partners of Global Water Partnership West Africa (GWP-WA) was held on 7 and 8 May 2015 in Cotonou, Benin. The theme of the meeting was " The challenge of the post-2015 Development Agenda in Africa: what role for Partnerships in the context of Climate Change?'. Organized by the GWP Regional Secretariat in collaboration with the Ministry of Energy, petroleum exploration, mining, water and renewable energy, and the Country Water Partnership of Benin, it was under the patronage of the Minister.
SRI is as a set crop management practices for raising the productivity of irrigated rice by changing the management of plants, soil, water and nutrients. One of the important treatments of SRI is that standing water is not essential anymore instead the soil is kept just fairly wet and thus creating aerobic-anaerobic conditions during the cultivation period. This treatment gives distinct behaviors of water regimes allowing more proliferation of roots and the most important is capable to enhance the activities of soil micro-organisms.
GWP Central America, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), in coordination with the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) of El Salvador, organised the workshop "Integrating Water Security in the National Adaptation Plans (NAPs)." The event was held in San Salvador, El Salvador, on 27-29 October.
The Integrated Programme on Flood Management has started some activities at the end of 2015 in West Africa. The first drafts of country studies of Mali, Benin and Ivory Coast on the status and needs assessment on flood management in the Volta Basin are available.
One of the areas of advocacy that the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) promotes is Rainwater Harvesting (RWH). GWP-C advocates for safe RWH practices as a means of water augmentation, especially in light of climate related scenarios predicted for the Caribbean.
In the 2015accounts audit report, the auditor's conclusion was the following: "We believe that the financial report of the Regional Water Partnership for West Africa (GWP/WA) and the CWPs (Burkina and Ghana) accurately reflect the statement and financial position of the Regional Water Partnership for West Africa and the CWPs (Burkina and Ghana) as of 31st December 2015, consistently with the GWP financial procedures.”
The way forward in 2016 is to strive to implement all partially implemented recommendations including those made in 2014 and those made as of 31st December, 2015. It should be noted that almost all new recommendations dating from 31st December 2015 have already been implemented prior to the finalization of the audit report in 2015 in Burkina Faso and for the region.
The Second workshop of the Integrated Drought Management Programme in Central and Eastern Europe was held on 8-9 April in Ljubljana, Slovenia.