Dr. Grobicki stressed the need to consider the specificity of each region and country, and to regard diversity as GWP’s strength. She also mentioned GWP’s Gender Strategy adopted in August 2014, which will be followed by a Strategy for Youth Engagement in 2015. She reminded the participants of the fact that most regions still need to develop stable local funding and that the leadership of each country water partnership needs to be strengthened.
GWP TEC Chair Dr. Mohamed Ait Kadi emphasised that GWP is a knowledge network and there is a need to design new frameworks and new tools to support effective policy development and decision making. He encouraged dialogue and specific collaborative initiatives to result from the meeting.
On the topic of improving the knowledge chain, Dr. Dale Whittington mentioned the opportunity for reaching out to students through online courses, and claimed that the GWP is well-equipped to provide more online communication among its partners. To add to his comment, Dr. Danka Thalmeinerova pointed out that the GWP IWRM ToolBox has proven to be very useful for engaging with universities and capacity building networks around the world.
GWP Chair Dr. Ursula Schaefer-Preuss was pleased with the two background papers which were also launched during the meeting – Background Paper no. 19: Groundwater Governance and Irrigated Agriculture by Dr Tushaar Shah, and Background Paper no. 20: Water Security: Putting the Concept into Practice, by Prof Eelco van Beek and Wouter Lincklaen Arriens.