The theme of the 4th Africa Water Week 14-18 May in Cairo, Egypt, is “Water for Growth in Africa, AMCOW’s Journey @10”. The Global Water Partnership will be launching the AMCOW/GWP Strategic Framework material. GWP will have a booth and is also a convenor and co-convenor of sub-themes and will be participating at the following events:
GWP Central Africa supported the Cameroonian Ministry of Economy and Planning to carry out a one-year survey of the proposed site of a deep-water port at Kribi. GWP Central Africa developed a forward-looking planning and decision-support tool to help ensure more efficient land use, to preserve the integrity of the port facilities, and to aid natural resources management and the preservation of vital ecosystems. This work shows how IWRM principles can be put into practice at the local level, as part of a major infrastructure project.
GWP Moldova made recommendations to five local authorities across Moldova for improvements in water management practices and for reducing environmental damage, together with assessments of the effect of these improvements on community development, the environment, and cost estimates.
GWP Thailand has been working to strengthen stakeholders' capacity in monitoring IWRM in critical river basins suffering from resource overuse.
The United Nations Development Programme/Global Environment Facility project, completed at the end of 2012, mainstreamed integrated ecosystem management principles and practices in land and water management.
The challenges China is facing with the rapid growth of urban centres, and the corresponding demands on limited water and related resources, is immense. This is true on the Loess Plateau which covers an area of some 640,000 km² in the upper and middle of China's Yellow River. A workshop on “Efficient Use of Water Resources and Ecological Compensation” was co-organized by GWP China-Yellow River and the Yellow River Research Institute on 27-28 September 2010, in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
Sharing sub-regional experiences on water cooperation and learning about designing and conducting negotiations on transboundary water-related issues were the topics of a SADC/ UNESCO workshop to “Promote Cooperation and Conflict Prevention in Transboundary Water Resources” on 25-27 February, 2013 in Gaborone, Botswana.
Lake Peipsi/Chudskoe is the largest transboundary lake in Europe. Action has been taken by riparian governments of Russia and Estonia to develop and sign an Agreement on the Protection and Sustainable Use of Transboundary Water Bodies. An intergovernmental commission was established to co-ordinate the implementation of this agreement. Co-operation over Lake Peipsi demonstrates how integrated water resource management tools can be applied to transboundary waters shared by countries in transition.
Sustainable development requires multi-stakeholder partnerships. That is the message of a new report on water security in Africa published by the Global Water Partnership. (Photo: GWP Executive Secretary Dr Ania Grobicki and Hon Buyelwa P. Sonjica, AMCOW President and Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs in South Africa)