On March 31st 2014, the Costa Rican Congress passed the new Water Law. For over a decade the Central American countries have been working on reforming their water legislative and institutional frameworks, and one of the pioneers in this process has been Costa Rica.
The Limpopo River Basin (LRB) which has a total population of 18 million with 15 million in South Africa, 1.2 in Botswana, 1.1 million people in Mozambique, 0.8 million in Zimbabwe is prone to natural disasters as a result of climate change. Therefore, on the 24th of November, 2015, Resilience in the Limpopo Basin Program (RESILIM) in partnership with Global Water Partnership Southern Africa (GWP SA) undertook an in-country consultation workshop on the development of the Limpopo River Basin Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Action Plan.
The Regional Secretariat of GWP Eastern Africa assisted with technical and financial support to a meeting in Mogadishu to launch a Somalia Country Water Partnership on 29th January 2014. As a result of the meeting, Somalia is soon set to join GWP by establishing a Country Water Partnership.
The 6th edition of the European River Restoration Conference, integrated with the Final event of the SEE River project, will be held in Vienna.
Within the context of the partnership ECCAS-GWP signed in December 2013, a meeting held in Libreville, Gabon from 29th to 31st of July 2015 brought together the two parties.
The meeting aimed at assessing the progress made in the process of developing a regional strategy and action plan for hydrological and meteorological services in Central Africa on the one hand and take stock of the process of the creation and operationalization of the Regional Solidarity Fund for Water following the submission of the final document to ECCAS for validation on the other hand.
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 16th WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA symposium, under the theme “Integrated Water Resources Management and Infrastructure Planning for Water Security in Southern Africa”, will be held at Le Meridien lle Maurice Hotel, Mauritius from 28 - 30 October 2015.
Mr Iswer Raj Onta, Regional Chair Global Water Partnership South Asia (GWP SAS) (2013-2015), passed away on Sunday, 6 March 2016. The entire GWP Network is saddened by his departure and it is a great loss to the South Asia Region.