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The Second Water Sustainability Summit was held 27 September 2012 in Chile and gathered more than 900 people. It brought together national key players and international experts to discuss actions towards national water sustainability.

Desires to maximise irrigated agriculture during the Soviet era has resulted in degradation of water resources. After independence, most countries in the region adopted national policies dealing with water supply and sanitation. Furthermore, since 2002, Global Water Partnership in Caucasus and Central Asia (GWP CACENA) promotes and supports introduction of IWRM. The main lesson learnt is that an IWRM approach should include any essential infrastructure needed for development. 

Providing safe drinking water to poor families is a critical development issue of India. To address the common outbreaks of water borne diseases, the Naandi foundation together with Water Health India initiated the pilot rural Community Safe Water Scheme that combines cost-effective water purification technology with community-driven and performance-based approach. This case illustrates that with awareness raising campaigns, rural households are willing to pay for clean drinking water. 

GWP Chair Dr Letitia A Obeng participated in the side event ‘The Water We Want: Youth Act for Water’ on 12 October 2012 at the UN General Assembly in New York. The event was a partnership between the Belgian Youth Delegates to the UN and the World Youth Parliament for Water, hosted by the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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

This publication is part of the ‘Integrated Drought Management Tools and Guidelines Series’, compiled by the Integrated Drought Management Programme (IDMP). This Handbook of Drought Indicators and Indices is based on available literature and draws findings from relevant works wherever possible. The handbook addresses the needs of practitioners and policymakers. The publication is considered as a resource guide/material for practitioners and not an academic paper. This publication is a ‘living document’ and will be updated based on the experiences of its readers. The indicators and indices detailed in chapter 7 of the handbook are also available online at www. droughtmanagement.info. IDMP encourages water managers and related experts engaged in the management of drought around the globe to participate in the enrichment of this publication.

To stimulate new thinking to improve Sri Lanka’s natural resources management, the first Young Water Professionals Symposium for the country was organized by GWP Sri Lanka in association with IWMI and Unilever on 22-23 November in Colombo with the participation of the Hon Minister of Water Supply and Drainage Dinesh Gunawardene and Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Nobel Peace Prize winner 2007 (IPCC), and over 150 participants.

To stimulate new thinking to improve Sri Lanka’s natural resources management, the first Young Water Professionals Symposium for the country was organized by GWP Sri Lanka in association with IWMI and Unilever on 22-23 November in Colombo with the participation of the Hon Minister of Water Supply and Drainage Dinesh Gunawardene and Prof Mohan Munasinghe, Nobel Peace Prize winner 2007 (IPCC), and over 150 participants.

To implement policy change is a process that takes time. During this time, it is possible that the people involved change, resulting in a loss of knowledge. In Malawi, action was taken to combat institutional memory loss by involving as many high-level decision-makers as possible and by organising awareness raising workshops. This demonstrates that it is possible to avoid the loss of knowledge when key decision and policy-makers change.