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The 11^th Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWP SA) Consulting Partners meeting will be held from the 13^th to the 14^th 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.

An International Water Law workshop took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on 16-20 November. The event promoted international cooperation and good transboundary water resources governance in the Amazon and Rio de la Plata basins.

Zhang River runs through Shanxi Province, Hebei Province and Henan Province as the border of Hebei and Henan Provinces. Within the basin, there is a large population but inadequate water and land resources. The residents of the villages along the river only have a small amount of valley terraces and flood land barely meeting their survival demand.

Decades of underinvestment led to poor water and wastewater services and low coverage in Manila. Due to this poor service, the government was unable to increase its water tariffs due to customers’ unwillingness to pay. This situation translated into very low cash flows for the government, thus leading again to the issue of underinvestment, which soon turned to a vicious cycle.

Water governance remains a key challenge in the Mediterranean. Efforts of countries focus on improving policies making and action planning, institutional settings, law and regulation, enforcement mechanisms, innovative financing, application of cost recovery and polluter pays principle, etc. To achieve sustainable models of development, water must be mainstreamed into other sectoral policies such as agriculture, land planning and use, energy, industry, tourism and trade. Political will is key for making these happen. The importance of cross-cutting issues, such as gender, equity, poverty and rights, is increasingly recognized but is still relatively poorly tackled.

China is at the heart of debates around the perceived trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. Since the early 1990s, the country has experienced remarkable economic growth, lifting nearly 600 million people out of poverty and averaging a per capita GDP growth rate of 8.9%. The question of how to release water to growing urban areas and industries while continuing to increase farm production and rural incomes is therefore something of a political headache.Since 2000, the government’s desire to build an ‘ecological civilization’ has meant greater integration of economic development, environmental protection and poverty reduction in the country’s most important national planning documents and policy agendas. Promoting more efficient agricultural water use can encourage economic growth and is a good investment. China’s success in releasing water from its agricultural sector has allowed its industry and services to use the water saved to grow.

The Cercle Elais Hotel in the Commune of Gombe in Kinshasa, DRC was a hive of the SADC Water week activities that ran from the 27^th - 29th of April, 2015. This highly anticipated event was perceived as a big water celebration and brought together national stakeholders from a variety of sectors including civil societies, academic institutions and consumer associations. The programme started with the journalists training which was coupled with the youth forum in an attempt to provide the media practitioners with topic ideas on the challenges and realities faced by the young water professionals. The youth aged from 15 to 35 years old were representatives of various students associations, youth organisations and private companies.