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 Global Water Partnership (GWP) has sponsorship available for eligible participants to complete the online course in Integrated and Adaptive Water Resources Planning, Management and Governance offered by McGill University’s Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
On 29 October 2014, GWP Central and Eastern Europe is realeasing a new video at the European River Restoration Conference 2014 to trigger a debate on public participation in water management.
The beauty and wilderness of Danube floodplains was continuously deteriorated by human impacts. Construction of the Gabcikovo water dam caused direct clearance of minimum 2,500 ha of floodplain forests and influence of water regime of other areas. A regional NGO BROZ located in Slovakia, has developed a project for EU funding scheme LIFE. The project aims to preserve last remaining natural floodplain forests in Slovak part of the Danube floodplain and to introduce sound, sustainable forest management in the area. As a result, a Sustainable Forest Management Strategy has been elaborated to give a base for new forest management plans.
The Integrated Drought Management Project in West Africa (IDMP-WAF) was officially launched at the workshop held on 28 and 29 January 2015 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Forty participants including 4 women, mainly from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, Sweden, Switzerland and representing regional (CILSS, ECOWAS) and international organizations (ACMAD, WMO and GWPO) took part in this meeting placed under the patronage of the Minister of Agriculture, Water Resources, Sanitation and Food Security of Burkina Faso.
An onsite meeting was attended by the main actors involved in the implementation of the demonstration project in order to assess the progress.
As of April 29, 2015, IRRIFASO has completed the installation of drip irrigation system. They also tested the system with the existing pump on site. The conclusion is that the system is operating normally, the pressure achieved was 0.3 bar considered to be sufficient for such a system.
Tanzania is facing increasing pressures on its water resources due to a growing agricultural sector and the effects of climate change. In order to ensure environmental and economic sustainability in the face of water scarcity the local communities of Kiroka village, Morogoro, conceived a project to build capacity for climate adaptation through sustainable land and water management. The participatory approach coupled with capacity building and holistic problem solving that also addresses livelihood issues has proven to be an effective method of implementing an IWRM plan that is sustainable and can be readily subscribed to.
The 1st Regional Conference of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled project Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector was organised on 28-30 October 2014, in Athens, Greece, by the Global Water Partnership- Mediterranean (GWP-Med), in close collaboration with the EU funded Sustainable Water Integrated Management-Support Mechanism (SWIM-SM) project. It convened more than 110 decision makers; representatives of government; civil society; the private sector; international organisations; donors and financing institutions.