At the 11th GWPSA Consulting Partners held in Pretoria from 12-13th November, 2015, GWPSA Partners elected a new Chair. In line with GWPSA’s Constitution, the Chair will serve for four years. The new Chair, Dr. Kuiri F. Tjipangandjara is from Namibia. He obtained his D Sci Eng Degree in 1991 in Mineral Engineering and Chemical Metallurgy, at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia University, New York City, USA.
Within the framework of developing a full project proposal on the establishment of an Early Warning System in the Lake Chad Basin area, GWP-CAf and LCBC organized a workshop on the approval of the inception report on the strategy for conducting the assignment, and the deliverables to be produced by the team of consultants, charged to produce a full-fledged project document. The workshop was held from 11-12 of July 2016 in Ndjamena, Chad.
The attendees to this meeting were 8 experts (in hydrology, climate change) and 4 support staff from the LCBC executive secretariat, 3 experts from German Cooperation groundwater and climate change adaptation projects, the coordinator of the programme to rehabilitate and strengthen the resilience of lake chad basin systems (PRESIBALT), 2 representatives of GWP Central Africa, and the team of three recruited consultants (2 experts of PEGASYS from South Africa and 1 independent consultant from Chad).
The main objective of this meeting was to present, enrich and approve the inception report on the strategy for conducting the assignment, and the deliverables to be produced by the team of consultants. It was also an opportunity for consultants to meet, share their experiences and strengthen their collaboration.
The programme of ecological security of ten-kilometre river of Fujian Province was initiated by Fujian Water Resources Department and GWP China Fujian.
On January 14, 2016, Mr. Chen Lei, Minister, Ministry of Water Resources(MWR), accompanied by Mr Jiao Yong and Mr Zhou Xuewen , the Vice Ministers , director generals and related leaders of the MWR visited GWP China’s Host Institute in Beijing.
Across India, the magnitude and intensity of extreme weather events like drought and floods is increasing. Such changes in climatic conditions affect a myriad of issues of which, access to water for drinking and domestic purposes and for agriculture affect farmer communities in South India the most, as majority of Indian farmers are dependent on rain fed agriculture.
This article is part of a wider coverage of the “MENA Focus” events, a set of four regional sessions dedicated to the Middle East & North Africa, officially launched at the Stockholm World Water Week 2016, alongside the Regional Days for Africa, Asia and Latin America. The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) had been selected and serves as the overall coordinator for these “MENA Focus” events. The sessions were organized in partnership with a number of international regional institutions and organisations. “World Café 2016: Water, Growth, Stability” was the last of the four sessions, held on the 31st of August.
Getting the GWP-CAf ready to successfully end the first period (2014-2016) of its regional strategy, also repositioning it to fit for the second half of the regional strategy and for 2030. Yes. But how? It is to answer this question that the GWP-CAf chair convened an extraordinary Steering Committee meeting. This meeting had as theme: “SDGs: Opportunities for changing and redefining the role and business model for GWP-CAf and the CWPs. It was held on June 30, 2016 in Douala, Cameroon.
The attendees to the meeting were the statutory steering committee members notably, 4 chairs of CWPs; Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo and Sao Tomé and Principe; the chair of the technical and Scientific Committee; the representatives of ECCAS and of basin organizations: CICOS; the delegates of Civil Society organizations (REFADD) and the players of water sector (SODECA); the GWP-O executive secretary as well as the GWP Southern Africa (GWPSA) executive secretary.
The overall objective of this extraordinary Steering Committee meeting was to reflect upon and propose a roadmap for the choice of the new host institution for GWP-CAf and to examine the different options of business model and governance for GWP Secretariat at country level in order to apply them in central Africa region.
Through different presentations on positioning the GWP network to fit for future 2030 and its implications as well as on the experience of governance and funding of GWP Southern Africa, the members of steering committee understood that the GWP network needed a double reforms
An internal change that will take into account the improvement of four domains (strengthening the country level; improving sustainability of financing; improving corporate knowledge management and learning and increasing Institutional performance) while external change will cope with a new global water institutional architecture.
The south-south initiative (GWPSA and GWP-CAf) based on experience sharing between regions permitted participants to go through the CWP governance, accreditation process and different managing options for CWP.
The Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean (GWP-Med) coordinated the Drin Day 2016, joining forces with the Mediterranean Information Office for Environment Culture and Sustainable Development (MIO-ECSDE), in the framework of the Drin Project and the Act4Drin Project respectively.