Over the last five years Pakistan has suffered three major floods. In 2010, the country experienced a super flood which devastated the country, with 2,200 people losing their lives. GWP Pakistan recently helped organise an international conference on flood forecasting.
Clearing for logging, combined with expanding agriculture and palm oil plantations has led to increased flooding, and pollution of the Kinabatangan River due to pesticides and fertilizers. Working in partnership, the Sabah Wildlife Department and the WWF took action and have established the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary. The key lesson of this case is the value of starting with small-scale feasible projects before scaling up.
The WACDEP Capacity Development Programme Newsletter as of August 2014 is now online. Please follow the link to read the full report. More information about the programme can be found here.
To identify the best approach to increase public participation in the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive, the EU funded research project River Dialogue was initiated, testing two specific participatory methods of citizens’ involvement. This case illustrates the means by which local people, who are not specialists, can take part in discussions and decision-making process of complex environmental issues.
The Caribbean Weather Impacts Group (CARIWIG) is a new initiative setting out to create tools that will enable access to climate change information which are specifically applicable to the Caribbean region. To support the development of the Project, key regional stakeholders including GWP Caribbean, gave input at a Regional Stakeholder Consultation workshop on 6-7 February, 2013 in Jamaica.
The national reserve Sur is deteriorating. Action has been taken by NGOs to initiate a project to restore water conditions in the reserve, including the interplay between water and soil. Despite the projects importance, it failed to be implemented due to conflicts with national authorities. This case illustrates the danger of EU initiatives being implemented without an active public involvement since this creates risks of low acceptance of local communities and land owners.
The GWP’s annual Consulting Partners Meeting and the Regional Days were held from June 23 to 28 in Port of Spain, the capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, sponsored by the GWPO and organized by the GWP Caribbean Region. The delegation of the GWP China was sent to participate in all the events and the discussions.
During 2012-2013, GWP Latvia co-produced a movie "Staburadze, are you still crying?", coordinated by Daugava Museum in Latvia.
To stimulate new thinking to improve Sri Lanka’s natural resources management, the first Young Water Professionals Symposium for the country was organized by GWP Sri Lanka in association with IWMI and Unilever on 22-23 November in Colombo with the participation of the Hon Minister of Water Supply and Drainage Dinesh Gunawardene and Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Nobel Peace Prize winner 2007 (IPCC), and over 150 participants.