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This year’s World Water Day theme is “Water and Sustainable Development”. Preparatory work for celebrating the day is underway in several countries, with the main UN celebration taking place in New Delhi, India, on 20 March. Building up to the event, GWP’s #watergoal campaign has been stepped up.

The Water, climate and development programme Lao PDR aims to develop stakeholder analysis and roadmap for capacity development on water security and climate resilience. Series of consultation meetings were conducted from June to September 2014 to gather inputs from stakeholders at national, province and river basin level.

 

In total 404 people from 55 institutions were involved in the meetings including public, private sector, academia and provinces throughout the country. The main finding from the series of consultations is that the knowledge of local communities in river basin about climate change is still limited. However, most stakeholders consider climate change as a challenge to find appropriate solutions for. Based on the findings, the Lao Water Partnership drafted a National Capacity Building Plan on Water Security for Climate Change Adaptation and Management.

Download Report on the "Sustainability of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Initiatives in the Caribbean" here.

The first step of working towards water security is to understand the nature and the scope of the resource itself. That means taking a holistic view of the water resources in a given country or region and relating those to their use by society and the environment. For that, demand and supply need to be assessed and data on the physical and the socio-economic aspects of the resource gathered. It is also important to understand how policies are performing, which is why indicators for IWRM should be developed and used for monitoring and evaluation.

A proper enabling environment establishes the rights and assets of all stakeholders (individuals as well as public and private sector organizations and companies, women as well as men, the poor as well as the better off), while ensuring for environmental quality. The enabling environment essentially consists of “rules of the game” that are laid out as to achieve a sustainable balance between the social, economic and environmental needs for water. These rules can be defined by the use of: (1) Policies; (2) Legislative Frameworks; and (3) Financing and Investment Structures.

As part of GWP’s continuous efforts to minimise the impacts and the carbon footprint of GWPO, the organisation has decided to support wind energy projects in India.

The Zambian Government and numerous stakeholders have attached great importance to the water agenda as evidenced in its participation in the SDG Consultation on Water held on 5^th March 2014 at Cresta Golfview Hotel, Lusaka, Zambia.

More than twenty (20) stakeholders in St. Lucia from Ministries of Public Utilities and Finance and other government agencies, the private sector, non-governmental organisations, water and wastewater managers, legal practitioners, among others were trained in the area of Water Financing in a workshop held in St. Lucia on May 28^th and 29^th, 2013 put on by the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) and the National Water and Sewerage Commission (NWSC) of St. Lucia.  

To supply water to a growing population, an aqueduct was built in the watershed of El Limón River in Tovar municipality. However, this aqueduct does not provide sufficient supply, creating conflicts among the communities. To solve these, agreements on the use and conservation of water resources have been made among the communities, involving both rural villages and urban areas. This illustrates the benefits of a participatory approach. 

GWP Eastern Africa produces a quarterly newsletter, The Water Digest whose aim is communicating to our stakeholders about a series of activities geared towards a water secure and climate resilient region.