On November 19, 2014, Dr. Zhong Lijing from the WRI China visited GWP China Secretariat to discuss the possibility of developing salon series under theme of water dialogue in coming years.
The GWP’s annual Consulting Partners Meeting and the Regional Days were held from 26 August to 1 September 2013 in Stockholm.
The lack of laws and regulations, as well as good administration and management, contribute to poor water governance. In the Naranjo river basin, action was taken to implement IWRM after initiatives stemming from individuals with personal conviction of its importance. This has led to the creation of some formal legislation and the process of implementing IWRM. This consequently illustrates the potential important role of individuals in driving policy change.
At a time of increasing water demand and the prospect of climate change, the problem of water scarcity in the Mediterranean region and in particular the Greek islands deepens and becomes more critical. Hence, there is an urgent need to enhance water efficiency and to explore further alternatives to ensure water availability using innovative approaches. The revival of traditional water harvesting and management techniques, which have been overlooked in favour of modern technologies, sometimes less sustainable, appears to be one of the most promising alternatives for supplying freshwater in the face of increasing water scarcity and escalating demand.
The Indus River is a major transboundary river in Asia with nine tributaries. The River is about 2,800km long, with 2,682 km in Pakistan. The Indus drainage basin covers an area of about 1,140,000 km2 stretching from Afghanistan through China, India, and Pakistan. Monsoonal rains are the most important flood-causing factor in the Indus basin, followed by the size, shape, and land-use of the catchments as well as the conveyance capacity of the corresponding streams. The monsoon rains fall from June to September, and are generally intense and widespread.
The IDMP WAF has launched a consultation to recruit national experts in the project countries (Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger) to review drought management ongoing initiatives in each country.
The IDMP Project officer met also a delegation from the Danish Hydraulic Institute (DHI) to discuss area of collaboration mainly on the possiblity of carrying out the identification of microproject for demonstration in Burkina Faso. DHI is already working on inundation and drought management tools in the Volta Basin and the collaboration could build on this intiative.
The Ghana Country Water Partnership (CWP-Ghana) supported Mr. Yussif Rahmani (one of the participants in the Media training workshop held in September, 2014) from Quality FM in the Garu Tempane District to host a talk show in the Tampizua I community in the Kusaal language. This was a follow-up to an earlier show held in December 2014 in English at the premises of the radio station where it was recommended to organise one in the local dialect to disseminate widely the information to peasant farmers.
Water is a source of conflict around the Berki River Basin in Ethiopia, predominantly a consequence of a lack of IWRM awareness and an institutional framework. Action was taken to implement an IWRM pilot project to account for different stakeholder interests, resulting in the development and adoption of the Berki Basin IWRM. Key lessons drawn from the project include the importance of capacity building, consensus building, and the importance of decentralised multi-stakeholder platforms for conflict management.
Rapid urbanisation has led to widespread settlements of floodplains, resulting in widespread vulnerability of livelihoods. Since traditional approaches are no longer sufficient, a more integrated flood management approach was realised to adapt to changing social, hydrological, and environmental conditions along the nation’s major waterways. Furthermore, the Ministry of Water Resources prepared a national flood management strategy. The crucial lesson is that the key to flood risk management is learning to live with flood risks.
The International Land Coalition (ILC), Global Water Partnership (GWP) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI) has brought together land and water professionals, researchers and policy makers to reflect on the linkages between water and land in the emerging geopolitics of food, and to discuss cases from global, regional, basin, national or local levels, where these linkages were successfully addressed in legal frameworks, policy, and/or practice. The workshop is being held in Pretoria from 15 – 16 June 2015.