Sustainable Sanitation in Central and Eastern Europe: Addressing the Needs of Small and Medium-Size Settlements
The GWP has mobilized its partners to promote a more integrated approach on how to deal with Danube's water resources.
The GWPO Network Officer Mr. Bjorn Guterstam, accompanied by GWP CEE Chair Mr. Liviu Nicolae Popescu, presented the statement on behalf of observer organizations to ICPDR at the Ministerial Meeting on 16 February in Vienna, Austria. At the meeting, Ministers endorsed detailed actions for environmental protection in the Danube River Basin.
With support from GWP and UNDP the Kazakhstan government has drafted an IWRM plan and established river basin councils, realizing that management problems could be helped off by IWRM.
A regional process to save the Aral Sea has resulted in an “Action Plan for the realization of the Decisions of the Presidents” of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
In December, 120 people, including members of parliamentary committees, director generals, representatives of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), other multilateral organisations, and international and local NGOs validated the Burundi IWRM Plan and demanded immediate implementation.
GWP Provincial Water Partnerships in Fujian, Hebei, Hunan and Shaanxi are key players in implementing two rural development policies – The Water Saving Society and The New Countryside Development.
Key challenges in Central Asia are the degradation of ecosystems and increasing water deficiency. It is a region of scarce water resources, many of which cut across national borders. The intensive use of the limited resources leads to conflicts of interest, making transboundary water resources management crucial to the sustainability of the region’s resources.
In 2008, the Sri Lanka Water Partnership (SLWP) began working with the Water Integrity Network (WIN) to fight corruption surrounding illicit and unregulated river sand mining.