A joint GIZ, African Union Commission (AUC) and GWP study tour covered the topic of “Water Security and Climate Resilient Development in the German Water Sector” in Berlin in June. The participants were from the African Ministers’ Council on Water (AMCOW) Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), and the training provided a closer look at effective climate adaptation measures in the German water sector.
The beauty and wilderness of Danube floodplains was continuously deteriorated by human impacts. Construction of the Gabcikovo water dam caused direct clearance of minimum 2,500 ha of floodplain forests and influence of water regime of other areas. A regional NGO BROZ located in Slovakia, has developed a project for EU funding scheme LIFE. The project aims to preserve last remaining natural floodplain forests in Slovak part of the Danube floodplain and to introduce sound, sustainable forest management in the area. As a result, a Sustainable Forest Management Strategy has been elaborated to give a base for new forest management plans.
The Global Water Partnership-Caribbean (GWP-C) hosted a National Stakeholder Consultation in Trinidad, on April 16th, 2014 which formed part of a global consultation exercise to get country level feedback from twenty-six (26) countries on proposals for a dedicated Water Goal in the United Nations (UN) Post-2015 Development Agenda.
Food security is considered one of the greatest challenges currently facing humanity. Water is a crucial natural resource in food production, and for this reason food and water experts met in Costa Rica. The aim was to establish a dialogue between the two sectors.
A presentation on Gender Mainstreaming in the SADC Water Sector was made during the 6th RBO workshop held on 15-17 October, 2014 at Birchwood Hotel in Johannesburg, South Africa. GWP SA has facilitated the organization of the RBO workshops, which are aimed at enhancing and building the ability of the RBOs to prepare, respond and recover from water related impacts (flood and droughts) and build resilience to climate change within the RBOs through all aspects, including gender mainstreaming.
Due to temporal and spatial variability of rainfalls, Sri Lanka experience local scarcity. Furthermore, most water resources are used for irrigation, and little is left for industry and domestic use. Action was taken towards policy reform but these reforms were, however, nationally desired but externally designed, leading to failure since they did not account for the Sri Lankan context. This case study thus illustrates the crucial importance of national anchoring of policies.
As a key step in the overall process of implementing the Water and Climate Development Programme (WACDEP), a rapid capacity needs assessment in Africa was launched on Tuesday, 23 April 2013. The assessment will initially target eight countries and five river basins/aquifer systems currently implementing WACDEP: Burundi, Rwanda, Burkina-Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Tunisia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique; Limpompo Basin, Kegera Basin, Lake Chad Volta Basin and the North Western Sahara Aquifer System.