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In Kyrgyzstan, lack of drinking water and access to sanitation is a pressing problem which reinforces social vulnerability and poverty. Financed by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, actions have been taken to improve access to drinking water and sanitation by the Ministry of Health. These projects had a high level of community involvement which increased the sense of ownership.

10 years status of IWRM implementation in Southeast Asia.

Twenty (20) practitioners from the Agriculture Sector in Barbados, recently had the opportunity to be trained in the area of Water Use Efficiency (WUE) at a workshop put on by the Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) and its partner, the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

Changing the behaviour of water users and water managers towards more sustainable practices is a necessary step in achieving water security. However, this requires changes of deeply held attitudes in individuals, institutions, professionals, and social organisations to encourage a more water-oriented society. By definition, social change instruments are not neutral: the positive aims that one person might pursue with their behavioural change could be considered destructive by others. Therefore, it is important to be clear on the goal (what to change) and on the method (how to change).

Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) with the support of its partner, the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) of The University of the West Indies (UWI) Cave Hill Campus in Barbados, spearheaded the first-ever Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Knowledge Management Workshop to be held in the Caribbean.

In contrast to prescriptive and rather rigid master water plans, an IWRM-oriented planning process takes a more flexible and dynamic approach to planning the development and management of water resources. Planning reflects the total activity in the system, whether defined as river basin, catchment, or watershed, including for example agriculture, forestry, mining, and other land uses. IWRM plans can be used to strengthen good governance within a strategic water management framework of goals, policies, and planned actions to achieve the goals. Since participation is one of the key pillars of integrated water management, stakeholders should be involved in the planning and implementation process.

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.

The most pressing problem facing the Songkhla Lake Basin is land degradation and water pollution caused by land use changes and shrimp farming expansion. Action was taken to combat these issues and an Integrated Environmental Management approach was applied. The key lesson of this case is that replacing blueprint master planning approaches with process oriented planning frameworks increased sustainability significantly.