The 2nd Regional Alumni Workshop of the ‘Water Integrity Capacity Building Programme for the MENA Region’ was organised by GWP-Med (8-11 February 2016, Dead Sea, Jordan). Regional alumni workshops aim to lead to the creation of a regional community of practice on water integrity and foster water integrity ambassadors, reinforcing the enabling environment and building synergies in the target countries and the MENA Region at large. The first Regional Alumni Workshop (November 2015, Tunis, Tunisia) targeted alumni from the national civil society workshops, whereas this second one targeted operational/mid-level management staff.
More than 80 Members of Parliaments (MPs), journalists, country administrators, intergovernmental organisations, NGOs, and private partners from 16 countries contributed to a regional workshop dedicated to climate change adaptation in coastal areas of the Mediterranean (5-6 November 2015, Athens).
Securing continuous political support for enhanced ownership, wide outreach and impact, is among the horizontal objectives of the regional project "Capacity Building Programme on Water Integrity in the Middle East and North Africa"[1]. This SIWI-led, Sida-supported, UfM-labelled programme where GWP-Med is a core regional partner, aims to develop capacities of targeted water stakeholder groups at different governance levels to improve transparency, accountability and participatory practices in water management in the MENA region. Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia are the focus countries of this work.
The MedPartnership and ClimVar projects held their final meeting on 3-4 November 2015 in Athens, Greece to showcase the results achieved through the activities and demonstration projects implemented over the past five years or so aiming to address the main environmental challenges that Mediterranean marine and coastal ecosystems face.
GWP-Med provides technical assistance to the UfM secretariat that coordinates/supports the drafting procedure of a roadmap and associated work plan for the work of the WEG.
Sustainable Water Integrated Management – Support Mechanism (SWIM-SM), the largest water-related regional project supported by the European Commission (EC) during 2010-2015, successfully concluded its phase I, and held its Final Steering Committee (SC) Meeting in Luxembourg, on the 25th of November. With a budget of 7.7 million Euros, the project was implemented in nine south Mediterranean countries[1] by a consortium led by LDK and with GWP-Med as the project technical director.
GWP-Med, along with Bewater Project partner, INRGREF, organised a national training in Zaghouan, Tunisia, for 30 Tunisian Youth NGO members active in water resources management issues, on November, 13th-14th, in order to raise their capacity to address the challenge of sustainable water resources management under climate change constraints.
The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) contributed to a key UNESCO handbook on science diplomacy and transboundary water management published in late 2015, focusing on the Orontes River case in Lebanon; this was the outcome of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) project “New technologies for an integrated and sustainable management of natural resources in Lebanon” financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.
The Inception Meeting of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) supported project “Enabling Transboundary Cooperation and Integrated Water Resources Management in the extended Drin River Basin” took place in Tirana, on 16 December 2015, at the presence of Mr. Edmond Panariti, Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Water Administration, Mr. Ferid Agani, Minister of Environment and Spatial Planning, as well as Mr. Stevo Temelkovski, Deputy Minister of Environment and Physical Planning.
