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.
Activities such as horticulture and tourism around the Great Barrier Reef create sediment, nutrient and pesticide runoff, placing increased pressure on the ecosystem. The World Wildlife Fund has taken action, predominantly by raising awareness. The key lesson is how a carefully orchestrated campaign can convince decision-makers of the importance of integrated river basin management as a means of reducing land-based marine pollution.
On April 17, 2013 in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic, a workshop was held to discuss the report on Green Growth in the Aral Sea, prepared by the Global Water Partnership (GWP) of Central Asia and the Caucasus, the Scientific Information Center of the Interstate Coordination Water Commission (SIC ICWC) of Central Asia with the support from the Global Green Growth Institute (Korea). The workshop was attended by officials from national water agencies and executive bodies of ICWC.
In order to contribute to the comprehensive and sustainable economic development in the region, GWP Central America has launched the Water, Climate and Development Programme, a programme that will promote water security as a strategic adaptation to climate variability and change.
To drive the interest of Integrated Water Resources Management at the political level in the Caribbean, since 2005, the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) in collaboration with its partner, the Caribbean Water and Wastewater Association (CWWA) host an Annual High Level Forum of Ministers (HLFM).
On 27-28 May 2014 in Almaty, Kazakhstan there was held the Regional Conference "Prospects of water resources management in Central Asia: From the river basin approach to regional cooperation".
Due to increased agricultural irrigation and large scale dam projects, and inappropriate land and water management practices, the water inflow to the Komadugu Yobe Basin has dramatically been reduced. Action has been taken to establish a legal and policy enabling environment, as well as to increase knowledge among the local communities to establish more sustainable behaviour. The main lesson learnt was that although a multi-stakeholder participatory approach is slow, it helped to mobilise partnership.