The Assembly gathered 268 delegates, representing the Member Organizations, water administrations or observers from 41 Countries, as well as the representatives of several interested multilateral organizations (including representatives of GWP – Letitia Obeng, GWP Chair, Reginald Tekateka, Chair of Regional Chairs, Vadim Sokolov, GWP CACENA Regional Coordinator) and International Commissions or Authorities for transboundary basins.
The main Assembly’s outcomes were formulated in the INBO Declaration of Dakar, which concluded the following aspects.
Integrated and sound water resources management is more than ever an unquestionable priority when this scarce resource is already a limiting factor for sustainable development in many countries of the world.
Unprecedented mobilization is essential for humanity to win the water battle and prepare the future. Organizing this management on a basin scale is an effective solution which deserves to be developed, fostered and supported.
INBO intends to actively contribute to the efforts for adapting to the effects of climate change:
by supporting programs for identification of the threats, allowing anticipation, thanks, for example, to the development of integrated information systems,
by allowing the populations to be better warned and informed on the evolutions and behaviors that are likely to overcome the difficulties,
by protecting and adapting natural spaces in basins and infrastructures within the framework of basin management plans,
by supporting the development of better coordinated agricultural and forestry policies regarding deforestation control, irrigation and water storage in particular.
It is especially necessary:
to improve the collection of information allowing a modeling of the phenomena and the development of scenarios leading to an identification of the most vulnerable black spots, to giving priority to the actions to be carried out and to a suitable answer;
to reinforce the water management institutions to guarantee a long-term and rational meeting of the needs of the populations, industry, hydropower power, agriculture and fresh water fish farming, tourism and of the ecosystems.
Investing in water management is profitable! This produces immediate advantages but also creates a social, economic and environmental strength in the long term. Avoiding the effects of floods and droughts, fighting against wastages and pollution, protecting aquatic ecosystems also allow reducing poverty and ensuring sustainable development.
INBO member organizations have experience and expertise which they intend to pool and pit them at the disposal of all the countries and institutions which would like to follow them in an effective basin management approach.
The Assembly underlined the great interest of publishing “Briefs”, such as that on basin development and management, jointly published in 2008 with the IWMI and Global Water Partnership, and of course the “INBO/GWP Handbook on integrated management by basin”, which is a great success… already translated into nine languages! This Handbook was officially presented during the World Water Forum in Istanbul in March 2009.
The drafting of a second Handbook on transboundary river basin management to be launched in 2010 with GWP and UNESCO.
The Assembly highlighted success of close relations between the INBO Regional Networks and some corresponding “Regional Water Partnerships of GWP” (RWPs) in the same geographical areas, to work together to the implementation of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) on the particularly suitable geographical scale of river basins.
In particular, the already very close cooperation between INBO/ANBO and the African “RWPs”, initially the “GWP/WATAC”, will be reinforced to jointly work to support the “National Dialogues for Water”, and especially their components on river basin management and management of African transboundary rivers and aquifers.
The Network of Russian-speaking Basin Organizations of Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA-NBO) was launched in Moscow on 11 and 12 December 2008. Its provisional secretariat is taken care of by SIC ICWC in Tashkent with certain contribution from GWP CACENA.
The Assembly unanimously nominated Mr. Mohamed Salem Ould Merzoug, High Commissioner of the Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (OMVS), as the new INBO President until next General Assembly which will take place in 2013 in Brazil.
The General Assembly empowered the new composition of the INBO Liaison Bureau including the following persons: Mrs. Madeleine Jouye de Grandmaison (France) and Mr. Monsieur Laszlo Kothay as former Presidents and Mr. Vicente Andreu Guillo, President of ANA (Brazil), as next President in 2013, as well as the representatives of the Permanent Technical Secretariats: Mr. Jean-Francois Donzier for INBO and EUROPE-INBO, Mr. Dalto Favero Brochi for LANBO, Mr. Luis Firmino Pereira for MENBO, Mrs. Daniela Radulescu for CEENBO, Mr. Adama Sanogo for ANBO and Mr. Javier Ferrer for MENBO, Mr. Normand Cazelais for NANBO and Mr. Vadim Sokolov for EECCA-NBO.
For the participants there was organized technical visit to the mouth of the Senegal river.
GWP representatives at the INBO Assembly
His Excellency the President of the Republic of Senegal
Mr. Abdoulaye Wade
INBO Assembly Plenary session
Baobabs – part of the Great Green Wall across the Africa
Field visit to the Diama Dam on the Senegal river
Sluice gates
Tea ceremony
Dirty canal – typical picture for Dakar area
nbsp;