The 16th WaterNet/WARFSA/GWP-SA Symposium was held on the island of Mauritius at Le Méridien Hotel from the 28 to 30 of October 2015 under the theme ‘Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) and Infrastructure Planning for Water Security in Southern Africa’. The University of Mauritius, a GWPSA partner was the lead host of the Symposium. The Symposia has been held annually in the Eastern and Southern African region for the past 15 years to promote interaction among policymakers, academics, practitioners from water and related sectors, and cooperating partners.
Stakeholders concerned with water management and food security recently gathered for the First World Irrigation Forum in Turkey. A GWP delegation participated and discussed future collaboration possibilities with forum organiser ICID (The International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage).
Countries are currently negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda.
The capacity needs for youth on IWRM in Lao PDR is strongly needed to advocate the knowledge and skills which they can further support and disseminate among their specific groups in the schools, universities and communities. Youth has more creative ideas and lots of activities related to environmental protection as well as some of water protection – water saving campaign, etc.
Tanzania is facing increasing pressures on its water resources due to a growing agricultural sector and the effects of climate change. In order to ensure environmental and economic sustainability in the face of water scarcity the local communities of Kiroka village, Morogoro, conceived a project to build capacity for climate adaptation through sustainable land and water management. The participatory approach coupled with capacity building and holistic problem solving that also addresses livelihood issues has proven to be an effective method of implementing an IWRM plan that is sustainable and can be readily subscribed to.
An onsite meeting was attended by the main actors involved in the implementation of the demonstration project in order to assess the progress.
As of April 29, 2015, IRRIFASO has completed the installation of drip irrigation system. They also tested the system with the existing pump on site. The conclusion is that the system is operating normally, the pressure achieved was 0.3 bar considered to be sufficient for such a system.
A three-day National Adaptation Plan (NAP) training workshop was held from the 3rd to 5th of September in Salima, Malawi as an effort to help the Government of Malawi identify the next steps in establishing a NAP process. The workshop was highly interactive drawing upon a broad range of climate sensitive sectors and stakeholders, and was successful in reaching its overall objectives of building an understanding of the NAP process and to draft a roadmap for country level advancement.
Malaysian Water Partnership, in collaboration with the Department of Irrigation and Drainage Malaysia (DID), conducted the Stakeholder Forum for Incorporating Climate Resilience in the National Water Resources Policy Action Plans on the 27th and 28th of October 2014. This activity was a response to the launch of Malaysia’s National Water Resources Policy on 24 March 2012 which recognized climate change as an important issue to be addressed in the policy formulation. This forum was attended by 90 people from 40 institutions.