GWP Chair Dr Letitia A Obeng spoke at the”High Level event Leaders’ Forum on the Future Women Want: Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment for Sustainable Development” on 19 June 2012 at Rio+20, organized by UN Women, in collaboration with the Government of Brazil.
“Water is life, but water can also be a threat to life”. This was said by the Permanent Secretary in the former Ministry of Water Resources Development and Management (MWRDM) in a keynote speech read on his behalf at a Catchment and Sub-catchment consultation and action planning workshop. He further highlighted that water resources in Zimbabwe need to be treated with extreme care due to increased scarcity being brought about by the adverse effects of climate change.
Fragmented data collection made processing, use and interpretation of data challenging. To attain a more uniform data collection, the State Water Cadastre was initiated, designed to collect data on surface and ground waters, water users, water quality and water quantity. Through the implementation of this programme, data was more easily available and also provided for more accurate response to environmental challenges.
Climate Change is expected to have severe impacts on river discharges and water quality and quantity. In an effort to proactively find solutions to the current and future challenges of water, the project Environmental state and sustainable management of Hungarian-Slovakian transboundary groundwater bodies was initiated. The key lesson is the importance of evaluating all resources, including the links between groundwater and surface water.
The 2nd High-Level Regional Policy Workshop focusing on “Adapting to Climate Change Induced Water Stress in Nile River Basin,” kicked off in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, Thursday, 4th April 2013.
More than ten Government Ministers and senior officials with responsibility for water resources management in the Caribbean will meet at the 8th Annual High Level Session (HLS) Ministerial Forum on Water, to be held in The Bahamas on October 4th and 5th, 2012.
The Maasai live in an area of Kenya that has no water in the rivers for half a year. To address the water scarcity, the Water for the Maasai project was initiated. In this project, the Maasai, the donor and the NGO work closely to cooperate in the key issues of education, training and long-term guidance. The key lesson is that it takes time to build trust among donors, NGOs and native populations.