The Reventazon River Basin has been subjected to severe degradation, mainly through water pollution, leading to proliferation of disease, increased cost of drinking water, and endangered biodiversity. Action was taken by establishing the Committee for the Management and Planning of the Reventazon River Basin working with conservation and land management. The key lesson for success is the importance of the coordination of the different actors that deal with the basin management.
“Building resilience of people, communities and countries to these water-related disasters and extreme climate events is the major challenge of our time, as climate change will get worse before it gets better,” were the closing words of the speech given by the GWP Chair Dr Ursula Schaefer-Preuss at the first meeting of the High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters (HELP) on 4 June 2013 in Tokyo, Japan.
The Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) has embarked on a new and exciting initiative, designed to develop practical and user-friendly tools for climate resilient decision-making, focused on the water sector in the Caribbean. The new initiative will be undertaken as part of the GWP-C Water, Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP) for the Caribbean.
In an effort to address the twin challenges of water security and climate change, the African Ministers Council on Water has produced the following resources on Water Security and Climate Resilient Development in English, French and Portuguese.
The material has been developed as part of the Water, Climate and Development Programme (WACDEP), an AMCOW programme implemented by Global Water Partnership (GWP). It has evolved through a strong collaborative relationship between AMCOW and its Technical Advisory Committee, GWP and the Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) who funded the work.
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.
Following on the series of successful regional workshops on Water Financing carried out in 2009 and 2010 by GWP and the EUWI in South America, the international seminar, "Water and Environmental Sanitation Financing" was held in Porto Alegre on June 11, organized by GWP Brazil in partnership with ABES-RS, the Brazilian Association for Sanitation and Environmental Engineering. Its aim was to identify and promote ways of funding water resources management.
To protect the Panama Canal Watershed, which was created when the Panama Canal was constructed, formal limits to its utilisation was set up, including the Panama Canal Treaty and the creation of a Panama Canal Authority. This case study predominantly illustrates the peculiar problems that arise when a highly artificial watershed is managed by a modern, internationally oriented public corporation with a country that is still copping with the hydraulic culture and a national water policy.