Raising awareness among young people and their teachers about the vital importance of the Danube Basin is the main aim of the annual Danube Art Master competition. Each child and school in the basin, covering 19 European countries, is invited to create a threedimensional work of art from material found near water, such as plants, shells, mud, grass and waste.
Journalists from print media and broadcasting attended a workshop organised by GWP Cameroon in Douala in December 2012.
After the USSR was dissolved, Romania has experienced water scarcity for agriculture. The World Bank and USAID are providing loans/funds for irrigation projects and to strengthen water users associations. This case thus illustrates that irrigation subsidies may be needed to support agriculture until farming efficiency improves and returns from the sale of agricultural products can cover costs.
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.
West Africa now has 12 Country Water Partnerships (CWP). All ECOWAS countries have one except The Gambia, Liberia and Sierra Leone. In 2009 contacts were established with these countries and strong demand had been expressed to assist in the implementation of the CWP in each country.
The challenges China is facing with the rapid growth of urban centres, and the corresponding demands on limited water and related resources, is immense. This is true on the Loess Plateau which covers an area of some 640,000 km² in the upper and middle of China's Yellow River. A workshop on “Efficient Use of Water Resources and Ecological Compensation” was co-organized by GWP China-Yellow River and the Yellow River Research Institute on 27-28 September 2010, in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
The complex river basin system of the Nile basin is one of the most important ecosystems in Africa, hosting around 40% of the population. The nine countries of the Nile river basin share not only the world’s longest river, but also the challenges arising from climate change, such as land degradation, floods, reduced river flow, and droughts.
National IWRM visions, resulting from a ten-year pilot project in the Fergana Valley based on GWP's concept of IWRM, have been approved, adopted and released by the national water authorities.