Urgency for a Water Secure World
Throughout the planet, a number of issues affecting the availability and state of water resources cause a growing concern. The population is increasing. Pollution is increasing. Development pressures are mounting. However, water supply is not. Water demand by people, agriculture, food production and industry heavily pressurizes the limited water supply of the planet and ecosystems which are also dependent on water.
In June 2010 the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MARN) El Salvador proposed that GWP Central America and GWP El Salvador should facilitate processes to develop a water policy, a national water strategy and an IWRM plan.
Meetings of local water partnerships in June 2010 gave community groups in 45 villages in the Ramial and Indrajeet basins opportunities to present on-the-ground water issues that concerned them to revenue, irrigation, and agriculture and fisheries officials.
Central America has 120 major river basins, of which 23 (36 percent of the regional territory) are shared. In June 2010, GWP Central America and Zamorano International University, Honduras, organised a regional training workshop on how to apply economic and financial instruments such as tariffs, taxes and transfers in shared basins, some of which cross national borders.
A major characteristic of the water-climate scenario in Eastern and North-Eastern India is the frequency of droughts and floods following each other in succession. In such an environment, low cost water-saving technologies for farmers and other water users becomes essential.
In 2010 GWP Mediterranean and the Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development continued, for the eighth year, to feed information and material on water issues and processes in the region to members of the Circle of Mediterranean Journalists for Environment and Sustainable Development (COMJESD).
Representatives of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Global Water Partnership (GWP) met in New Delhi on 2-3 November 2009 to review past cooperation activities and to set a new framework for future collaborative work.
As part of the PAWD (Partnership for African Water Development) project, Senegal engaged in a development process for an IWRM Action Plan.
GWP El Salvador, together with the National Foundation for Development and Lutheran World Relief, organised the National Forum on Climate Change in San Salvador on 23-24 February 2011.