News and Activities

The UNESCO Chair of Sustainable Development Management and Education in the Mediterranean at the University of Athens, the Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development and the Mediterranean Education Initiative for Environment and Sustainability (MIO-ECSDE/MEdIES) are organizing an online survey, under the political guidance of the Secretariat of the Union of the Mediterranean (UfM) entitled “Mediterranean Youth Responses towards sustainable development and current crisis”.
The survey invites young people (15-35 yrs old) from the Mediterranean countries to share their thoughts about sustainability issues, the current economic and sociopolitical crisis in many parts of the region as well as their vision for the future.

For more information and to fill in the survey, click here.

Countries are currently negotiating the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as part of the UN Post-2015 Development Agenda.

The Second Consultation Workshop of the Palestinian Water Policy Dialogue, within the Union for the Mediterranean project Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector, was organised under the patronage of H.E. Mazen Ghuneim, Minister and Chairman of the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA), by the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) in Ramallah, on 6 May 2015.

The Mediterranean water community has traditionally been very active at the World Water Forum, the global water community’s largest regular interface with an outreach to actors outside the water box, strongly voicing core messages and highlighting experiences from the region. This contribution has been systematically concretized for each Forum through a dedicated Mediterranean Cross-Continental Preparatory Process.

Thirty participants from 5 Middle East & Nortnern Africa (MENA) countries - Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia - gathered in Tunisia, on 8-19 February 2015, in a course held in the framework of the 4-year MENA Integrated Sustainable Coastal Development Training Programme (MENA ISCD), financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and jointly implemented by NIRAS Natura AB and the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med).

Lebanon and Jordan are exploring the possibility of joining the UNECE Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (Water Convention). To assist the two countries in this process, UNECE and the Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean (GWP-Med), with financial support provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), have organised national workshops to increase awareness and understanding of relevant stakeholders of the different legal and institutional frameworks for cooperation on shared waters resources, the specificities of the UNECE Water Convention, in comparison to the UN Watercourses Convention, as well as the complementarity of the two agreements.

The Non Conventional Water Resources (NCWR) Programme in the Mediterranean, a multi-stakeholder programme, with activities in water scarce insular communities in Greece, Malta, Cyprus and Italy, was ranked 2nd best out of 9 water showcases globally at the 7^th World Water Forum in Korea.

The Institute of Applied Science at the Malta College of Arts, Science & Technology (MCAST) opened its doors to the public, on Thursday, 26 March, for the inauguration of its newly installed greywater recycling system and green roof, at the presence of Hon. Chris Agius, Parliamentary Secretary for Research, Innovation, Youth & Sport, and Prof. Michael Scoullos, Chairman of the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med). 

GWP-Med organised a workshop on Mainstreaming Gender and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in water policy related work on 2-4 March 2015, in Athens, in the framework of the ‘Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector’ Project, aiming to strengthen the Secretariat’s, as well as its partners’ relevant capacity.

Α Regional Roundtable & a Working Meeting on “Water, Food, Energy and Environment Nexus in South East Europe” were organized by the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC), Global Water Partnership - Mediterranean (GWP-Med) and Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), in cooperation with the German Ministry of Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), Global Environment Facility (GEF) International Waters: Learning Exchange and Resources Network (IW:LEARN) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).