Following a period of unusual heavy monsoon precipitation that started in mid-July and continue into August 2015, Myanmar experienced the most severe flooding in decades. The rainfall is associated with the south-west Monsoon, which occurs each year, but the situation got worse after the land fall of Cyclone Komen in Bangladesh on 30th July 2015 which brought strong winds and additional heavy rain to (north) Myanmar.
Nine (9) countries across Africa among which four (4) are from West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Mali and Nigeria) met in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on 18-19 May to take a step further on the national consultations carried out in 2015 that led-up to the UN Committee on Food Security’s (UN CFS) 42nd session.
The Chair of GWP WAf, Pr. Abel AFOUDA had a working visit at the Secretariat from October 19 to 24, 2015. During his stay on Ouagadougou, the Chair met with the staff to have an update on the implementation of various activities and give his orientations for finalizing pending issues.
He was presented the templates for the monitoring and drafting of the work plans, the draft progress reports of the CORE and the three projects bein implemented (WACDEP, IDMP and Mekrou), the guidelines for elaborating the budgets lines for 2016. On all these Prof. AFOUDA gave some orientations. The decision was also taken to convene the virtual meeting of the Steering Committee to appreciate the various documents and give orientations to the Secretariat. This meeting will be done early in November 2015.
To commemorate GWP’s 20th anniversary, a 2-minute video has been produced explaining – without words – the challenges of the world’s water crises and GWP’s answer: join our network so that all stakeholders can work in partnership to secure water for sustainable development.
India Water Week-2016 was held from 4 to 8 April 2016 with the theme of ‘Water for All: Striving together’. While the Inaugural and Plenary ceremony of the event took place at Vigyan Bhavan; the rest such as seminars, panel discussions, side events, exhibitions, brainstorming sessions, were held at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi.
Cooperation between GWP Slovakia and the Eastern Africa region has been in existence for quite some time. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed in Khartoum in March to outline the next steps of collaboration.
The majority of the Mediterranean islands encounter water scarcity challenges due to their small catchment areas and the impacts of emerging climate vulnerability and change. To tackle the problem of water scarcity, the Global Water Partnership Mediterranean (GWP-Med) has developed the concept and content of the Non-Conventional Water Resources (NCWR) programme implemented in Greece since 2008, in Malta since 2011, and in Cyprus since 2013.
The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) contributed to a key UNESCO handbook on science diplomacy and transboundary water management published in late 2015, focusing on the Orontes River case in Lebanon; this was the outcome of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) project “New technologies for an integrated and sustainable management of natural resources in Lebanon” financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.