GWP has been requested by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) to support the preparations for the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR) in March 2015 in Sendai, Japan. With inputs from its partners, GWP led the development of a brief on Water and Disaster Risk.
The Global Water Partnership (GWP) Gender Strategy is now available online. The objective of the strategy is to bring gender into the mainstream of GWP’s work, by providing an overarching framework to practice gender- and women-inclusive approaches.
A five day regional Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop with objective to “develop the capacity of stakeholders to better appreciate the impacts of climate change on water resources, and the ability to use the IWRM approach as a tool for climate change adaptation” was organized in Kinshasa from 12th -16th May 2014. The training was implemented by the Congo Basin Network for Research and Capacity Building in Water (CB-HYDRONET) with financial and technical support from CAP-NET, WATERNET, the Water and Climate Development Program (WACDEP) in GWP Central Africa and Southern Africa, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), University of Kinshasa and the DRC Ministry of Environment.
“Water security is at the heart of our global development challenge”, said GWP’s new Patron, Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as she spoke at Africa Water Week 2014 (AWW5) in Dakar, Senegal.
The GWP/WMO Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP) released a new publication on National Drought Management Policy Guidelines: A Template for Action.
The conclusions of a second round of national stakeholder consultations on water urge the global community to include a dedicated water goal within the post-2015 sustainable development agenda.
The International WaterCentre (IWC), in collaboration with GWP, is currently offering full scholarships (tuition fees and living expenses) for two high calibre candidates from developing countries to study the Master of Integrated Water Management programme (MIWM) in Australia next year.
At the end of last year, the GWP network consisted of 13 Regional Water Partnerships, 84 Country Water Partnerships, and 2,904 Partners located in 172 countries. The Annual Report for 2013 is now completed and available online.
On March 31st 2014, the Costa Rican Congress passed the new Water Law. For over a decade the Central American countries have been working on reforming their water legislative and institutional frameworks, and one of the pioneers in this process has been Costa Rica.
A drought monitoring system is being developed in South Asia, in a collaboration between GWP and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). A first Assessment Report has been released by GWP South Asia and the GWP-WMO Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP).