The workshop was held with the participation of 25 representatives of ministries of environment, foreign relations or others, and with members of legislative assemblies and institutions responsible for water management at the national level. The event was organised with the support of AECID and held at the AECID Training Centre in Antigua, Guatemala.
The objective was to promote cross-border cooperation by strengthening technical and institutional capacities around international water law, of those entities related to the subject, to facilitate good water governance and promote cooperation at national and international level in Central America.
“In the modern world, cooperation is the intelligent and useful method to obtain the benefits of the wealth of resources we have throughout the 23 water basins that we share in Central America and the 18 underground water basins. To be able to make the most of these resources we must identify the best options for development and negotiate in those terms,” said Prof. Salvador Montenegro-Guillén of Nicaragua, member of the GWP Steering Committee.
Issues addressed in the workshop included the fundamental principles of international law and their application to improve water governance, as well as water governance and regional and local case studies related to international waters.
At the event, the formal launch of the GWP Technical Focus Paper “IWRM in Central America: the over-riding challenge of managing transboundary waters” also took place. The paper was written by Salvador Montenegro-Guillén and Elisa Colom, and was supported by Dan Tarlock of the Illinois Institute of Technology and Adrian Cashman of the University of the West Indies, both members of the GWP´s Technical Committee. The authors of the paper were present at the launch and gave a short presentation on the findings of the study – part of this was done on Facebook Live, a recording is available here.
Further information on the event is available on GWP Central America’s website (in Spanish).