News and Activities

The First High Level Ministerial Panel on Responding to Climate and Environmental Challenges in South East Europe (SEE) took place on 1^st April 2016, in Podgorica, in the framework of the South East Europe Strategy 2020 and the Regional Cooperation Council (RCC).

The 2nd Regional Alumni Workshop of the ‘Water Integrity Capacity Building Programme for the MENA Region’ was organised by GWP-Med (8-11 February 2016, Dead Sea, Jordan). Regional alumni workshops aim to lead to the creation of a regional community of practice on water integrity and foster water integrity ambassadors, reinforcing the enabling environment and building synergies in the target countries and the MENA Region at large. The first Regional Alumni Workshop (November 2015, Tunis, Tunisia) targeted alumni from the national civil society workshops, whereas this second one targeted operational/mid-level management staff.  

More than 80 Members of Parliaments (MPs), journalists, country administrators, intergovernmental organisations, NGOs, and private partners from 16 countries contributed to a regional workshop dedicated to climate change adaptation in coastal areas of the Mediterranean (5-6 November 2015, Athens).

Securing continuous political support for enhanced ownership, wide outreach and impact, is among the horizontal objectives of the regional project "Capacity Building Programme on Water Integrity in the Middle East and North Africa"[1]. This SIWI-led, Sida-supported, UfM-labelled programme where GWP-Med is a core regional partner, aims to develop capacities of targeted water stakeholder groups at different governance levels to improve transparency, accountability and participatory practices in water management in the MENA region. Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia are the focus countries of this work.

The MedPartnership and ClimVar projects held their final meeting on 3-4 November 2015 in Athens, Greece to showcase the results achieved through the activities and demonstration projects implemented over the past five years or so aiming to address the main environmental challenges that Mediterranean marine and coastal ecosystems face.

Sustainable Water Integrated Management – Support Mechanism (SWIM-SM), the largest water-related regional project supported by the European Commission (EC) during 2010-2015, successfully concluded its phase I, and held its Final Steering Committee (SC) Meeting in Luxembourg, on the 25^th of November. With a budget of 7.7 million Euros, the project was implemented in nine south Mediterranean countries[1] by a consortium led by LDK and with GWP-Med as the project technical director.

The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) has established a long-term, mutually benefitial collaboration agreement with the General Department for Planning and Conservation of Agricultural Lands at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture on integrating climate change considerations in the latter’s new water and soil preservation planning, as well as on developing a territorial planning methodology using the Douimis basin as a pilot case.

The third and final “Climagine” consultation workshop was organised by the Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med), in the framework of the regional ClimVar Project “Integration of the Climate Variability and Change Impacts in the Integrated Coastal Zones Management National Strategies”, through two consecutive consultations, one in the archipelago of Kerkennah in Southern Tunisia, on July 28^th, 2015 and one in Tunis the day after, both with more than 25 participants from key organisations involved in Tunisia and Kerkennah’s coastal management.

The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med) has established a formal agreement with the Department for Planning and Conservation of Agricultural Lands at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture towards integrating climate change considerations in water and soil conservation planning, under the WACDEP (Water, Climate & Development) Programme; and in this context, it has entered a very fruitful collaboration with the Ministry, as well as the Regional Department for Agriculture in Bizerte, in Tunisia’s North, using the Douimis Basin in the Bizerte Region as a pilot for the development of the climate change mainstreaming methodology.