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The Mediterranean water community has traditionally been very active at the World Water Forum, the global water community’s largest regular interface with an outreach to actors outside the water box, strongly voicing core messages and highlighting experiences from the region. This contribution has been systematically concretized for each Forum through a dedicated Mediterranean Cross-Continental Preparatory Process.

“Water, gender and development are closely interconnected, and GWP realizes this fully. We think that water empowers women, and empowered women transform their societies.” These are the words of GWP Interim Chair Alice Bouman-Dentener on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2016 (#IWD2016). Alongside her, some of the remarkable women in the GWP network speak up - about their journey to become successful in their professions, how to overcome obstacles they face as women, and also recommendations to other women.

A new GWP perspectives paper outlines that the governance of land and water needs to be coordinated in order to feed the world’s growing population. The aim of the paper is to galvanise a discussion within the GWP network and the larger water, land, and development community.

The Dialogue on Water Resources Demand and Energy Development in the middle reaches of Yellow River organized by GWP China Yellow River, China Shenghua Group Company Ltd. and Yellow River Research Association with the support by GWP China was held on October 25, 2014, in Erduos, Inner Mongolia.

The Chair of GWP West Africa, Prof. Abel AFOUDA  accompanied by the Regional Coordinator and Communication took part in the GWP regional days 2015 in Stockholm from 22 to 25 November.   This meeting was an opportunity to review the progress made by the global network in its fields of action and to make projections into the future. GWP and several partners express satisfaction since their efforts to have a water dedicated sustainable development goal come true. Discussions are underway to better position the network of partners in supporting countries to be successful in the implementation of the SDGs as a whole but especially the goal 6 with its different targets. Discussions at the regional days gathered ideas for a better positioning of GWP.

Coordinated action at the Drin Basin level was absent until the development of the Shared Vision for the sustainable management of the Drin Basin and the signing of a related Memorandum of Understanding (Tirana, 25 November 2011) by the Ministers of the water and environment management competent ministries of the Drin Riparians i.e. Albania, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Kosovo* and Montenegro. This was the outcome of the Drin Dialogue supported by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and coordinated by UNECE and Global Water Partnership Mediterranean (GWP-Med).

The United Nation Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) have developed an online tutorial to raise awareness about the benefits of using climate services for decision-making. GWP contributes to the tutorial through a video interview with GWP Senior Programme and Network Officer Frederik Pischke.

The 7^th edition of the World Water Forum, the largest regular interface of the global water community with an outreach to actors outside the water box, will convene on April 12-17, 2015 in the Republic of Korea. The dedicated Mediterranean Cross-Continental Process to coordinate and prepare the regional contribution and key messages for the World Water Forum is co-facilitated by the Mediterranean Water Institute (IME) and the Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean (GWP-Med) and steered by a multi-stakeholder Committee involving national and regional water actors.

GWP Armenia organised a workshop to identify alternative technologies for urban wastewater treatment in Armenia. The workshop, held in Aghveran on 16-17 October 2014, also looked at the legal, institutional and financial obstacles.

The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) has established a formal agreement with the Department for Planning and Conservation of Agricultural Lands at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture towards integrating climate change considerations in water and soil conservation planning, under the WACDEP (Water, Climate & Development) Programme; and in this context, it has entered a very fruitful collaboration with the Ministry, as well as the Regional Department for Agriculture in Bizerte, in Tunisia’s North, using the Douimis Basin in the Bizerte Region as a pilot for the development of the climate change mainstreaming methodology.