This workshop is the first in a series of 10 local workshops planned at pilot sites in the six countries of the Volta Basin, including three in Burkina Faso. It is part of the implementation of the project "Integrating Flood and Drought Management and Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation in the Volta Basin (VFDM)" financed by the Adaptation Fund and executed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Volta Basin Authority (VBA) and the Global Water Partnership in West Africa (GWP-WA).
The opening ceremony of the workshop was chaired by the President of the Special Delegation of Bama, Mr. Félix BAYE, in the presence of the President of the Country Water Partnership of Burkina Faso, Mr. Moustapha CONGO, the representative of the Director General of Water Resources of Burkina Faso, Mr. Gérard ZONGO, the Deputy Executive Director of the VBA, Mr. Dibi MILLOGO and the Executive Secretary of GWP-WA, Mr. K. Armand HOUANYE.
The main objective of the local workshop is to build resilience to climate change (CC) by improving the participation and engagement of grassroots stakeholders in the adoption and implementation of long-term integrated flood and drought risk management (IFRM) policies, strategies, plans and decision-support tools in the Volta Basin.
Specifically, it involved discussing with participants the flood and drought risk profile, the EWS - VoltAlarm, the regional mitigation and GIRIS strategy and other disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) provisions in the Volta Basin. It provided an opportunity to deepen and complete the comments and suggestions for improvement, based on the experiences of local communities, to the flood and drought risk profile, the EWS - VoltAlarm, the regional reduction and GIRIS strategy and other DRR and CCA provisions in the basin. Actions were thus proposed to consolidate and ensure the sustainability and scaling-up of the results of VFDM implementation, particularly at the Tabota pilot site, and to strengthen the implementation of the regional reduction and GIRIS strategy, the deployment of EWS - VoltAlarm and other DRR and CCA provisions in the long term in the national portion of the Volta basin. The exchanges also enabled us to deepen and complement best practices and opportunities for improving IFRM and CCA measures in the national section of the Volta Basin. Ideas were put forward on how to disseminate best practices for improving IWRM and CCA measures in the national portion of the Volta Basin, identified and documented with a focus on the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders at community and local level at transboundary level.
The workshop was attended by some forty participants from the deconcentrated technical services in charge of water, the environment and agriculture, as well as the local authorities and populations of Badara, VBA, GWP-WA, the General Directorate for Water Resources, the National Meteorological Agency and others.
The meeting provided an opportunity to share the results of the "Mission de renforcement des capacités politiques, institutionnelles et organisationnelles de gestion intégrée des risques des inondations et de la sècheresse dans le bassin de la Volta", for which a team of consultants was recruited in Burkina Faso.
The workshop was marked by presentations, exchanges and group work, with plenary presentations of the results.