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Freshwater is under acute pressure from climate change in North Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, COP20 delegates heard on Wednesday. Experts from countries as diverse as Tunisia and Belize urged visionary leadership from politicians to protect natural resources, reports CDKN’s Mairi Dupar from Lima, Peru. The experts from the African Ministerial Council on Water (AMCOW), Global Water Partnership and CARICOM also called for water managers to build on their local innovations for climate resilience – and to get savvier about communicating solutions to policy-makers. The event was an opportunity to learn about common problems and possible solutions across Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, based on a South-South learning project supported by CDKN.

The UN-Water annual Zaragoza Conference serves as preparation for the annual World Water Day. GWP representatives participated in several of the sessions.

Water Integrity Capacity Building for the Middle East and North Africa region is a four year (2014-2017) regional programme implemented by Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) in collaboration with GWP-Med and other regional and local partners.

In the Maltese islands the Proramme is known as Alter Aqua. Both Malta and Gozo have limited freshwater resources and depend heavily on desalination. The need to mobilise Non Conventional Water Resources (NCWR) to secure local water availability is evident.

In Greece the NCWR programme is know as Rainwater Harvesting (RWH). RWH aims at revitalising and reintroducing traditional rainwater harvesting combined with innovative techniques and methods in the Greek islands, as a tool to improve water availability and climate change adaptation at a local level.

BWP in collaboration with Institute of Microfinance (InM) organised a seminar on the role of Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) in Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) at community level on 15 November 2014 in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

GWP-Med aims at putting IWRM, as well as the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems Nexus approach, into practice to help countries towards growth and water security emphasizing good governance, appropriate infrastructure and sustainable financing. In doing so, it focuses on contributing to and advocating for solutions for critical challenges to water security, such as climate change impacts, urbanisation, food insecurity, energy insecurity, ecosystems threats, unemployment, migration, etc.

Bangladesh Water Partnership (BWP), in collaboration with the Institute of Microfinance (InM), organised a seminar on 15 November on micro finance in climate change adaptation. The aim was to identify bankable projects and overcome challenges at village level in implementing climate resilience projects.