West Africa has ten aquifers and some countries have no other alternative water resources than groundwater.
A project focusing on safe water and sanitation in the Republic of Moldova won Category 2 of the Award.
The Volta River basin remained one of the few unregulated transboundary watercourses in Africa. Action was taken to improve water governance and water management practices. Although this is still in progress, it has resulted in multi-scale participatory governance frameworks for joint management. From this process, it is evident that building a local knowledge base with good data and information systems is important in deciding the most efficient allocation of resources.
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 5th March 2014 at Cresta Golfview Hotel, Lusaka, Zambia.
The Training Workshop on “How to connect policy and science for an improved water management: A practical introduction to application of knowledge brokering in the Sava River Basin Management Planning” that was held from the 30th of November to the 2nd of December 2011 in Zagreb, Croatia was proved to be fruitful and lucrative.
The ToolBox Workshop was held on 22-23 March 2013 in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University.
The Upper Guadiana Basin provides a classic example of conflict caused by the intensive use of water resources in a semiarid region. Since the 1960s, uncontrolled abstraction of groundwater to provide water for crop irrigation in the area has lowered the water table in places by up to 50m, causing the main river channels to run dry and some wetlands to become desiccated. On the other hand, the abstraction has also supported a booming agricultural economy.
Improving the governance and economic value of drilling