The Tisza River is faced with deteriorating water quality as well as floods with increasing frequency and levels. These issues are exacerbated by climate change. Action has been taken, both by national authorities, international actors and NGOs to develop more adaptive management schemes. The key lesson is that in water management, the biggest problem is the weak coordination among different fields and interests – such as agriculture, nature, navigation, flood defence.
South Asia Regional Workshop on Lessons Learnt in Strategy Implementation on Climate Change Adaptation in Water Sector is scheduled to be held from 9 to 10 September 2014 in Colombo, Sri Lanka; organised by South Asia Co-operative Environment Programme (SACEP) in partnership with GWP South Asia.
With the collapse of the USSR, the water sector seized to be subsidised leading to deterioration of basic infrastructure. Action was taken to partially transfer the responsibility for operation and maintenance of irrigation systems to water users. Nonetheless, this has had limited success because it has been seen as an additional cost rather than benefit. This illustrates that for this to work, the returned benefits need to be higher than the costs.
Climate change is expected to severely affect water resources in the low-lying part of the Netherlands. It was decided to take an integrated approach and a process was set up in which all parties claiming space in the area were invited to discuss the water issues. The key insight from this case is the additional water needs can be integrated in the spatial planning through an open planning process.
A national workshop organized by the Permanent Secretariat of the National Council on Environment and Sustainable Development (SP/CONEDD) was held on 27 March 2014 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso to validate “the study and mapping of the vulnerability to climate change of water resources in the Nakanbé basin”.
The Lake Ossa complex is faced with unsustainable fishing practices, habitat destruction and deteriorated water quality. These trends have severe negative impact on the livelihoods of people, leading to further unsustainable over-exploitation. To combat these developments, a sustainable livelihood approach has been applied to foster collaboration among stakeholders. From this experience, it is evident that active local NGOs can be vehicles for facilitating dialogue and mobilising different stakeholders.
Two members of the WACDEP Reference Group Madam Patience Agyare- Kwabi, a Gender expert from Ghana and Dr. Roberto Martin-Hurtado, an Economist from the United Kingdom and team leader visited Burkina Faso and Ghana, the two West African countries where the WACDEP is being implemented.
In accordance with Protocol of Intentions signed on 20th December 2013 between the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources of Uzbekistan and Korean Institute of Construction Technology (KICT) about development of information system for water sector of Uzbekistan, Regional Secretariat of GWP CACENA arranged a working visit of KICT delegation to Uzbekistan during 11-18 May 2014. The delegation included Dr. Kim Hyun Jun, Director of Department in KICT, Dr. Hong Ilpyo, Project Manager and Mr. Lee Joonseok, IT Expert.
With global change projections pointing to increasing water scarcity and drought in the Mediterranean, which are bound to cause significant environmental and socio-economic impacts, the development of a new management approach for water basins by integrating scientific thinking with sociological considerations seems essential.
Two back-to-back meetings on water management in Central Asia recently took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. GWP representatives Natalia Alexeeva and Vadim Sokolov were invited to the regional workshop “Integrated Water Resources Management in Central Asia”, where they presented the IWRM Toolbox and instruments, and gave an overview of the SDG process and the activities of GWP Central Asia and Caucasus.