The devastating floods in Western Europe highlight the serious weather extremes that are now affecting many parts of the world. Until recently, it was easy to overlook these events, thinking they only happened in poor and remote communities in less developed countries. Not anymore. The flooding last week shows that climate change is real, it is hitting close to home, and it’s affecting all of us.
Two virtual 2-day workshops focusing on ‘The Climate-Land-Energy-Water (CLEWs) modelling framework and its use in the Nexus Assessments of the Drin and the Drina River Basins’ were held on 6-7 July and 8-9 July 2021 respectively.
World Water Day is an important milestone to raise the awareness of water security globally. The theme of World Water Day 2021 is valuing water. The value of water is greater than its price – water has enormous and complex value for our households, food, culture, health, education, economics and the integrity of our natural environment. Without a comprehensive understanding of water’s true, multidimensional value, it will be challenging to safeguard this critical resource for the benefit of people, environment, and economic development.
The Indonesia Water Coalition (IWC) that officially established through the charter signing ceremony on the 29 January 2021 sees World Water Day as an important milestone to achieve water security in Indonesia, which aligns with its vision. Since its establishment in January 2021, the coalition has been focusing on initiating multi-stakeholder collaboration to tackle the growing water challenges jointly. To leverage best practices from each company and organization, we are inviting the coalition’s founding members to share their commitments, achievements, and future-plans to the public via online sharing sessions between 22-31 March 2021. As one of the founding members, Fany Wedahuditama, Regional Coordinator for Global Water Partnership Southeast Asia (GWP-SEA) shared these discussion topic on the 29 March 2021.
World Food Day is celebrated annually around 16 October. The 2020 edition is calling for global solidarity to help all populations, and especially the most vulnerable, to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to make food systems more resilient and robust so they can withstand increasing volatility and climate shocks, deliver affordable and sustainable healthy diets for all, and decent livelihoods for food system workers.
The 2021 European River Symposium will focus on building connections between institutions, organizations and companies with an interest in rivers and whose activities affect the health and quality of river water and ecosystems.
Social inclusion and gender equality are long-established, core values of the GWP Network and manifested in the GWP Gender Strategy and the GWP Gender Action Piece. In a series of inter-regional discussions, GWP Senior Gender & Social Inclusion Specialist Liza Debevec sets out to identify what GWP as an institution can do to apply the concepts in these documents. Her first discussion is with Amy Sullivan and Andrew Takawira, who are both involved in a large Pan-African project on gender transformative water and climate investment. The discussion topic is institutional leadership and commitment, which is the first of 4 action areas in the Gender Action Piece. Their message is clear: leadership makes all the difference.
During its statutory meetings held in Ouagadougou from 23 to 26 September, the Global Water Partnership West Africa (GWP-WA) partners officially launched the implementation of the new GWP Strategy 2020-2025 in West Africa.
