On 29 October 2014 the Government of the Republic of Uzbekistan organized an international conference “Development of Cooperation in the Aral Sea Basin to Mitigate Consequences of the Environmental Catastrophe” in Urgench, Uzbekistan.
A River Basin Management Plan of the Sava river basin is under development, the first attempt in the Southern European region to draft a River Basin Management Plan according to the EU Water Framework Directive. GWP Mediterranean and GWP Central and Eastern Europe have significantly contributed to the stakeholder involvement process related to development of the Plan.
The Coordination and Change project of the Limpopo Basin Development Challenge (LBDC), under the leadership of FANRPAN, GWP SA and WaterNet, is organizing a one and a half day workshop on 21-22 October 2013 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The International Conference on Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin was jointly held by GWP China, Chinese Academy of Engineering, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Zhejiang University and State Key Laboratory of Basin Water Cycle Simulation and Regulation, on December 9 to 12, 2013 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
In the race to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the role of small-scale WATSAN (water and sanitation) providers is indispensable. However, as this report "Small-scale finance for water and sanitation" claims, there is little awareness or cohesion among external support sgencies (ESAs), including EU donors, on the best way to increase financing for small-scale providers.
GWP Kyrgyzstan organized a workshop on 22-23 March 2013 in Bishkek for university lecturers to help them understand how to use the GWP IWRM ToolBox in education. Supported by the GWP global secretariat, the workshop was attended by 15 participants, mainly professors of the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University and the National Agrarian University in Bishkek, the leading universities in preparing Kyrgyzstan’s water resources graduates.
In Central Asia, water is unevenly distributed with states positioned downstream being placed in a very unfavourable position. The situation is further complicated since the benefits from cooperation are highly asymmetrical. Despite the challenge, the states have taken action and entered into a regional agreement, which attracted the international donor community to engage further. This case illustrates how international initiatives can influence institutional arrangements in transboundary basins.
There have been many dialogues and seminars on river pollution in the past 20 years or so. Generally everyone agrees that as a country, we desperately need to do something about the sad state of our rivers, especially when we hope to achieve developed nation status by 2020. However, we have not been successful in translating consensus at these forums into changes on the ground.