On January 12th, 2010 a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit a point 15 km southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It led to more than 230 000 deaths and significant physical destructions. The response actions were limited by the underlying vulnerabilities that existed in the country prior to the event and by a lack of coordination among decision-makers. This study intended to improve the understanding of policy-makers, water and sanitation practitioners and researchers on the actions that have been taken and their outcomes in the water and sanitation sector in Port-au-Prince. It revealed that weak governance coupled with poor infrastructure can result in catastrophic scenarios after the occurrence of a disaster.
Getting the GWP-CAf ready to successfully end the first period (2014-2016) of its regional strategy, also repositioning it to fit for the second half of the regional strategy and for 2030. Yes. But how? It is to answer this question that the GWP-CAf chair convened an extraordinary Steering Committee meeting. This meeting had as theme: “SDGs: Opportunities for changing and redefining the role and business model for GWP-CAf and the CWPs. It was held on June 30, 2016 in Douala, Cameroon.
The attendees to the meeting were the statutory steering committee members notably, 4 chairs of CWPs; Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo and Sao Tomé and Principe; the chair of the technical and Scientific Committee; the representatives of ECCAS and of basin organizations: CICOS; the delegates of Civil Society organizations (REFADD) and the players of water sector (SODECA); the GWP-O executive secretary as well as the GWP Southern Africa (GWPSA) executive secretary.
The overall objective of this extraordinary Steering Committee meeting was to reflect upon and propose a roadmap for the choice of the new host institution for GWP-CAf and to examine the different options of business model and governance for GWP Secretariat at country level in order to apply them in central Africa region.
Through different presentations on positioning the GWP network to fit for future 2030 and its implications as well as on the experience of governance and funding of GWP Southern Africa, the members of steering committee understood that the GWP network needed a double reforms
An internal change that will take into account the improvement of four domains (strengthening the country level; improving sustainability of financing; improving corporate knowledge management and learning and increasing Institutional performance) while external change will cope with a new global water institutional architecture.
The south-south initiative (GWPSA and GWP-CAf) based on experience sharing between regions permitted participants to go through the CWP governance, accreditation process and different managing options for CWP.
On March 8th, 2015, the Global Water Partnership (GWP) which comprises of thirteen (13) Regional Water Partnerships including the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) will celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) by advocating for a #watergoal, which would mean major improvements in living conditions for women worldwide. GWP's Chair Ursula Schaefer-Preuss points out that there is a close connection between women and water.
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.
On May 13, 2016, the MoU was signed between GWP China and other three Asian Regional Water Partnerships under the witness of all GWP family members in Stockholm, Sweden.