The Global Water Partnership (GWP) launched its new Youth Engagement Strategy at Stockholm World Water Week on August 25th, 2015. The youth strategy supports the wider GWP “Towards 2020” Strategy as does the GWP Gender Strategy, which was launched in August 2014.
2015 is a milestone with the new UN Sustainable Development Goals and the upcoming COP 21 on Climate Change in Paris in December. For the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), 2015 is the “water” year. Water is the main agricultural production factor impacted by climate change. In the Global Water Partnership (GWP), partners are joining forces at country, regional and global levels to contribute to sustainable development in the face of climate change. This initiative, in Sub Saharan Africa, will, in an inclusive manner, identify challenges and technical and institutional priority actions, and implement concrete activities at all levels. Read more
Securing continuous political support for enhanced ownership, wide outreach and impact, is among the horizontal objectives of the regional project "Capacity Building Programme on Water Integrity in the Middle East and North Africa"[1]. This SIWI-led, Sida-supported, UfM-labelled programme where GWP-Med is a core regional partner, aims to develop capacities of targeted water stakeholder groups at different governance levels to improve transparency, accountability and participatory practices in water management in the MENA region. Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia are the focus countries of this work.
If you are part of the GWP network, chances are that you have met GWP Head of Network Operations, Jacques Rey. He is coordinating GWP programmes in the global secretariat in Stockholm, and has been involved from the beginning of GWP, way back in 1996. Here he reflects on his history with the network.
The WACDEP Coordinating Unit, under GWP SA has been working with stakeholders in and the WACDEP Program Managers in Zimbabwe and Mozambique in the preparation of the Reference Group Country Missions scheduled for March 2014. The Reference Group meetings were held from 23-25 March in Mozambique and 26-27 March in Zimbabwe among other things provided opportunities to exchange experiences, lessons, and challenges with the WACDEP team in Mozambique on WACDEP implementation and generate perspectives for enhancing progress in all components of the programme.
Right at the heart of Namibia, “the land of the brave”, in the capital Windhoek was the venue for the 7th SADC Multi- stakeholder Water Dialogue held from the 29th to the 30th of September, 2015. Held under the theme, “Watering Development in SADC: The central role of water in driving industrialization” the dialogue was attended by 150 delegates from across the region representing the water sector, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), cooperating and development partners, academia, the media, and other relevant stakeholders from non-water entities (energy, agriculture, industrialization). The delegates, of which a good number were youth were brought together to deliberate the role that water will play in driving industrialization in the region.
Taking advantage of their presence in Ouagadougou, the GWP WAF chair, Abel AFOUDA and the network officer for West Africa visited with the Executive Secretary some of our partners. In view of getting in touch with the technical and financial partners, a series of meetings were organized.
From 1-2 September 2014, GWPEA organized in Rubavu, Rwanda a training workshop for 18 journalists from various media outlets.
The 11th Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWP SA) Consulting Partners meeting will be held from the 13th to the 14th of October 2015 in Pretoria, South Africa. The meeting that is held after every two years brings together the GWP Partners in Southern Africa, GWP SA Board, Regional Technical Committee (RTEC) and the GWP SA Secretariat staff. Also invited are the Strategic Partners with whom GWP SA has programmatic alliances, but these are self-funded.