A workshop on Water Integrity took place from 20-22 May 2013 at Birchwood Hotel, Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop discussed the theme “Strengthening Civil Society and Media’s Role in Promoting Integrity and Accountability in the Water Sector”. The course was part of a larger capacity building programme on integrity and accountability in the water sector developed by the UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI, Cap-Net, WaterNet and the Water Integrity Network (WIN) in order to assist in building institutional capacity among key stakeholders. Previous workshops have targeted water managers, and other water decision-makers as primary target groups.
The climate in Somalia is mainly arid to semi-arid, with an average annual daytime temperature of 27ºC. Somalia is located in an extreme water scarce area, where most of the available water resources exist in rivers shared with neighboring countries and demand for water is increasing due to the population and urban growth.Somalia is lacking, not only easily available water resources, both also the human and financial resources to set up institutions and water infrastructures that are desperately needed.
GWP Eastern Africa organized a Water and Climate Development (WACDEP) Training Workshop on August 21-22, 2013 in Bugesera District, Rwanda. The title of the workshop was “Role of Communication in Promoting Water Security and Climate Resilience.” The theme was grounded in the understanding that the success of WACDEP rests on how all stakeholders are informed, actively engaged and owning the processes: consultations, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. A total of 30 communications experts and journalists from Burundi and Rwanda attended the training.
GWPSA is a key partner involved in the implementation of some WaterNet Activities. These activities are currently being guided by the Phase III WaterNet Strategy (2012-2016), themed “Achieving Sustainability by Increasing Impact”. GWPSA’s main area of involvement has been through the WaterNet/Water Research Fund for Southern Africa (WARFSA)/GWP-SA Symposia, which have been held annually in the Eastern and Southern African regions for the past thirteen years.
The project “Strengthening the Institutions for Transboundary Water in Africa (SITWA)” officially launched
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.
A series of 22 country consultations took place from February to May 2013 to address the importance of water to national development.
Creating a site, be it a microsite, regional or rethinking gwp.org should be approached methodically. This section provides some best practices and some very basic tools to help you through this proccess.
Confronted with serious water issues constraining development, Burkina Faso decided to implement IWRM. The process has been conducted following three key steps: 1) assessing the status, 2) adapting the legal framework to IWRM principles and 3) Identifying key water resources management issues and developing an action plan. The main lesson learnt is that political will at the highest levels should be established at an early stage.