Generating energy requires water. Water management in turn affects energy planning, as energy is needed for pumping water, desalination processes, and water treatment plants.
The Bodrog River Basin is exposed to severe flooding caused by jumbled urbanisation and low connectivity between land (agriculture and forestry), urban and water planning. Management is made more complex by the transboundary nature of the basin. A project was, however initiated to strengthen cooperative management and to mitigate consequences of floods through achieving consistent and holistic management of flood risk in three basin countries. This case illustrates the importance of transboundary flood management.
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.
GWP Central and Eastern Europe will share experiences with lowland river restoration in Moldova and using water for energy and environment in Slovenian Alpine streams at the European River Restoration Conference held on 11th-13th September in Vienna.
The meeting on the project "Green Growth Framework for water security in the Aral Sea Basin was held on 26-28 March 2013 in Seoul, Korea.
On February 11, 2015, the Institute of Yellow River Hydraulic Research organized a workshop in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
GWP CACENA Regional Council Meeting was held on 7-9 July 2014 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
NATURE 2000 comprises a designation of nature sites of EU importance. However, after consultations with water managers, it became clear that NATURE 2000 sites located in the river valleys imposed new challenges for water resources management. Action was taken by GWP-Poland and WWF-Poland to find solutions. The project demonstrates that multi-stakeholder dialogue is a basic requirement for the solution of problems involving different perspectives and priorities.
In preparation for the new Water Law in Bulgaria, as well as the EU Water Framework Directive, the watershed council was set up as a pilot to test on-site effective and participatory approaches to river resource management in the Varbitsa River. The key lesson drawn is that participatory, open, citizen-friendly and bottom-up approaches are more efficient than top-down administrative approaches.