News and Activities

A regional consultation workshop took place in Tunis, on September 11^th 2014, aimed at supporting the development of the ten-year strategy (2015-2025) and the detailed five-year action plan (2015-2020) for the African Network for Basin Organisations (ANBO) to become an effective tool in strengthening and promoting institutional management mechanisms for shared water resources in Africa.

A field trip to the Secretariat of the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) as well as to water management national institutions in selected Danube Riparian countries - Austria, Slovakia and Hungary – that are active in the framework of the ICPDR, was organized on 8-10 October 2014.

The 1st Regional Conference of the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) labelled project Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector was organised on 28-30 October 2014, in Athens, Greece, by the Global Water Partnership- Mediterranean (GWP-Med), in close collaboration with the EU funded Sustainable Water Integrated Management-Support Mechanism (SWIM-SM) project. It convened more than 110 decision makers; representatives of government; civil society; the private sector; international organisations; donors and financing institutions.

A new and much awaited book by the Cornell University, the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future and the Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean was published in September 2014. As its title indicates, the book is a mosaic on its own - of stories, insights, questions and answers about water in the Mediterranean.

The national Report entitled “Water Governance in Jordan: Overcoming the Challenges to Private Sector Participation” was launched during the Third Workshop of the Water Policy Dialogue in Jordan and in the presence of H.E. Basem Telfah, Secretary General of the Ministry for Water and Irrigation, as well as a wide range of stakeholders, including authorities, utilities, donors, civil society and private sector, in Amman, on 4 June 2014.

The national Water Policy Dialogue, having engaged more than 100 Tunisian stakeholders within the past year (2013-2014), concluded with the launch of the National Report “Water Governance in Tunisia: Overcoming the Challenges to Private Sector Participation” held on 9 June 2014, in Tunis. The Report is the outcome of the multi-stakeholder Policy Dialogue and includes a diagnostic analysis of the key governance bottlenecks to private sector participation (PSP) in water supply and sanitation services as well as concrete policy recommendations for overcoming them.

“Karst Without Boundaries”, an international Conference and Field Seminar organized in the framework of the DIKTAS Project (Protection and Sustainable Use of the Dinaric Karst Aquifer System), was held from 11 to 15 June 2014 in Trebinje, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Following up to the International Roundtable on Transboundary Water Resources Management in the Southern Mediterranean and responding to the request expressed in June 2013 by the Arab Ministerial Water Council, the Workshop “Legal frameworks for cooperation on transboundary waters – Key aspects and opportunities for the Arab countries” took place in Tunis, Tunisia, on 11 and 12 June 2014.

The 1st Drin Day was celebrated on 17th of May 2014, in numerous locations across the Drin Basin, from Lake Ohrid till the outlet of the Buna/Bojana River on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in order to mark the willingness for transboundary cooperation aimed at the protection of the shared water resources and its supporting ecosystems.

The Policy Dialogue in the framework of the joint GWP-Med and OECD Project on Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector held its second consultation workshop in Tunis on March 5, 2014.