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Southern Africa

GWPSA supports LIMCOM Technical Task Team in the start to Developing the Limpopo River Basin IWRM Plan 2016-2020

GWPSA facilitated the LIMCOM Technical Task Team Meeting that was held to develop the Limpopo River Basin IWRM Plan 2016-2020.  The workshop took place in Johannesburg on the 6th and 7th of April, 2016. The 2016-2020 plan follows the 2011-2015 IWRM LIMCOM Plan that came to an end in 2015 and had adopted a comprehensive approach to Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) through three strategic areas, namely: i) Water Governance, ii) Water Management and iii) Water Resources Development. It was against these areas that the new plan would be developed.

This workshop was the first workshop in the development process of the Limpopo River Basin IWRM Plan 2016 -2020. It was primarily an inception workshop that involved brainstorming on how the Plan will be developed and to identify the Water Resources Management issues in the basin.

Present at the review meeting was the LIMCOM Technical Task Team who will also be involved in the development of the plan for the next five years. GWP and RESILIM will provide facilitation support under the auspices of LIMCOM to ensure the buy-in for the Action Plan by the countries.

In addition to discussing with LIMCOM Secretariat the process that will be followed to review and develop the IWRM Plan 2011-15, the following key issues were highlighted:

  • Stakeholders familiarising themselves with the various information resulting from projects implemented, such as RSAP priority areas, the Limpopo Monograph and the Challenge Programme for Water and Food.
  • Organising workshops with LIMCOM Secretariat which will facilitate the development of the vision and the IWRM Plan 2016-2020. These meetings will bring together LIMCOM Commissioners, technical task teams and other task forces as required.
  • Based on the collated information and the consultant’s own expertise, facilitate a meeting with LIMCOM Technical Task Team to develop responses to the issues, challenges and gaps that have been identified. This should lead to the development of a Draft IWRM Plan 2016-2020
  • Facilitate a regional validation workshop with LIMCOM, cooperating partners and other key stakeholders in order to validate the draft IWRM Plan.
  • Conduct interviews and consultations with the key stakeholders and institutions dealing with the problems and challenges that are being addressed in the basin in order to get input into the LIMCOM IWRM Plan 2016-2020. The key institutions to be consulted in each country will be discussed and agreed upon with the client at inception phase of the review.


By the end of the workshop, participants were able to able to:

  • Review the implementation of the LIMCOM IWRM Plan 2011 – 2015 by establishing which activities had been successfully implemented, which ones had not been implemented and what were the reasons/ challenges in doing so, which issues are still relevant in the basin and what the gaps in the plan were.
  • Develop a draft 2020 Vision and mission for the Limpopo River Basin to depict where the basin wants to be in terms of Water Resource Management by the year 2020.
  • Identify issues (current, emerging and future) in the basin that need to be addressed by the new plan and to also identify ways of addressing these issues.
  • Identify issues entailing what needs to be addressed within the context of the IWRM Plan.
Page last edited: 4/12/2016