News and Activities

GWP Myanmar (MmWP) held a Workshop on Integrated Flood Management in Bago River Basin at the time of Climate Change on 3rd August 2015 at Irrigation Technology Center, Bago.
Bago River situated in the Bago Region has occurred frequent flooding in the rainy season especially in July and August. The occurrence of flooding in recent period is more prominent due to the impact of climate change. Although certain activities of structure measure have been done to prevent flooding, there has been necessary to introduce non-structure measure approach to combat the flood disaster.
In this workshop, it is intended to organize multi-stakeholders from the Bago River Basin to discuss Integrated Flood Management and adopt this approach to sustain the livelihood and socio economic conditions of the people who are residing in this river basin. The dialogue was organized by MmWP and Irrigation Department, Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation of the Union of Myanmar with sponsorship support from GWP SEA.

The capacity needs for youth on IWRM in Lao PDR is strongly needed to advocate the knowledge and skills which they can further support and disseminate among their specific groups in the schools, universities and communities. Youth has more creative ideas and lots of activities related to environmental protection as well as some of water protection – water saving campaign, etc.

The government of Lao PDR is working very constructively to improve the water resources planning and management system in Lao PDR especially in the formal higher education system.

Through the Lao Water Partnership, Mr. Chanthanet Boualapha, Director General of Department of Water Resources, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment who acts as chairperson of Lao Water Partnership opened the consultation on mainstreaming the IWRM in the formal higher education system. He expressed on the important of IWRM progress and application in Laos context for a decade as well as capacity building on this field. He also addressed the importance of the strengthening the local capacity in the whole country for IWRM decentralization and human resource development including emphasizing on integration and mainstreaming IWRM /IRBM approach into education system in each level.

26 lecturers from Indonesian universities recently met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, together with GWP representatives for a workshop on Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) ToolBox.

One of our partners, The Network of Asian River Basin Organizations (NARBO), held its 8th IWRM Training in Thulhiriya, SriLanka from 27 November-4 December 2013 to be hosted by Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka (MASL).  The Training theme is "Enhanced Water Security through IWRM - Mahaweli Experience".

The eight days training program used a mix of participatory and trans-disciplinary case studies which aims to develop the capacity of participants in IWRM Implementation by using the "IWRM Spiral Model" which was introduced as part of the "IWRM Guidelines at River Basin Level" and issued by UNESCO in 2009. 27 Participants from 11 countries includes: Lao PDR, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

On 18 December 2013, Indonesia Water Partnership re-introduced Tool Box to 14 participants who came from Government, Professional, University, and NGO. Resource Persons came from: Government (DG Water Resources, Ministriof Public Work); Private Companies, NGOs, Highe Education (University). Indonesia Water Partnership (INA-WP) as an organizer and Co-organizer was Directorate of Water Resources, Ministry of Public Work, Republic of Indonesia. Inkind support received are meeting room, sound system and LCD

“We are trying to bring more people to write and share their result of hard work in to article and share it with other people by using Tool Box” Dr. Melati Ferianita , Indonesia Water Partnership.   

As an anticipation of drought problems, Indonesia Water Partnership held a dialogue with Local community on drought in a Meeting Room of Ministry of Public Work in Jakarta, Indonesia on 11 December 2013.

Indonesia is a country with two season, dry season and rainy season. During the dry season, drought has been a problem for society, industry and agriculture. There is not enough water to drink, cleaning, and washing for society. For farmers, it can be crop failure, late harvesting which make farmers lost their fund and start cropping from beginning. And for industry, there is also not enough water to run the business.

Following the successful implementation of the National Integrated Flood Management (IFM) Programme - Role of Community 2012 last year in Kuala Lumpur, which was attended by participants from the states of Selangor, Negeri Sembilan, Melaka and Johor, the same programme was again planned for this year, but held only at the State of Pahang on 7^th September 2013.

The 2013 event, aimed at raising awareness and disseminating information to communities living in flood-proned areas in the State of Pahang, was organised by the Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID) Malaysia and MyWP Capacity Building Network (MyCBNet) in collaboration with Malaysian Water Partnership (MyWP) and MyCWP.

Nine countries of Southeast Asia sit together in a workshop to share and discussed about water financing in region.This workshop took place in Yangon, Myanmar on 3^rd October 2013.

The goals of the workshop are to understand the financing frameworks for water resources management and development, to generate information regarding the level of public investments for WRM initiatives, and to propose potential financing schemes and mechanisms to increase the level of WRM financing.

There have been many dialogues and seminars on river pollution in the past 20 years or so. Generally everyone agrees that as a country, we desperately need to do something about the sad state of our rivers, especially when we hope to achieve developed nation status by 2020. However, we have not been successful in translating consensus at these forums into changes on the ground.