Regional
stories
Supporting integrated approaches to water resources management
Three projects focused on capacity building. One, in Guyana, sought to raise awareness and understanding of threats to the country’s water resources and the importance of an integrated management approach. It also aimed to establish a multistakeholder GWP chapter to share information and collaborate on national water-related events. A second project, in Dominica, focused on increasing the efficiency and robustness of data collection about water levels and flows to facilitate better planning, monitoring, and decision-making on water resources management. The third project helped raise awareness of the link between integrated approaches to water management and the SDGs in Barbados.
Another project received funding to collect data to populate a new hydrogeological database and to digitise the data to produce a hydrogeological map and model showing the extent of limestone aquifers and aquitards across the island. Hydrogeological mapping was also the theme of a project to address knowledge gaps on the quality and quantity of groundwater resources in northern Belize. Data gathered will inform a programme of monitoring and investigation of the regional aquifer.
A final project supported by GWP Caribbean in 2022 focused on enhancing energy performance at three pumping stations supplying potable water to the island of Montserrat. The funding facilitated a cost–benefit analysis of installing an automatic transfer switch to make it easier to engage alternative power sources when electricity supplies proved unreliable.
Position papers published
Members of GWP Caribbean’s Technical Committee authored two position papers in 2022 to highlight issues of key concern in the region’s water and sanitation sector. Both papers aimed to galvanise discussion among the GWP Caribbean Network and the wider water and development community.
The first paper focused on opportunities and progress made in integrating information and communication technologies (ICT) into water and sanitation services. It argued that ICT must be a core component of a balanced, evidence-based, integrated approach to water resources management and explored opportunities for integrating ICT into regional water and sanitation services. The report aimed to provide a platform for exploring opportunities for advancing investment, policy mobilisation, and research around ICT solutions to achieve regional water security.
The second paper described how wastewater is increasingly being viewed as an important resource. It promoted the potential of wastewater to become a supplementary source of water in the eastern Caribbean for use in commercial, industrial, and agricultural applications. The report suggested that reusing wastewater, complemented by sufficient water storage and rainwater harvesting, could make water more accessible and improve the climate resilience of households, industry, agriculture, and tourism establishments.
