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Sharing the BeWater experience with the international community at COP22

Monday, 12 December 2016 Posted in News, BeWater News

Entering its final phase, the BeWater Project has recently launched its outscaling campaign aimed at disseminating the project’s results to stakeholders in the wider European and international community not involved in the project so far but potentially interested in leveraging the lessons learnt during the project.

In this context, the BeWater approach and results will continue being presented at numerous international, European and Mediterranean conferences and workshops on water and adaptation, with the recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change COP22 Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, being the latest relevant example.

The Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean (GWP-Med), along with the Tunisian Ministry for Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries, organized a successful COP22 side-event on 17 November 2016. Under the title “From planning to action in the Water and Agriculture Sectors: Development and implementation of National Adaptation Plans”, the event aimed to foster exchange on good practices related to water security and climate adaptation mainstreaming in planning, as well as to inform on existing opportunities for promoting the Paris Agreement implementation and the Sustainable Development Goals’ achievement.

Dr. Annelies Broekman (CREAF), BeWater Case Study Leader for the Tordera River Basin, joined the first out of the two event’s panels on “Strategic frameworks for the Paris Agreement implementation for adaptation” that focused on planning at national and local level. Dr. Broekman shared with the more than 60 participants the BeWater experience with the collaboration between science and society on co-producing river basin adaptation plans in the Mediterranean context.

Moreover, Anabel Sanchez (CREAF) presented the BeWater experience at another COP22 side-event organised on the same day (17 November 2016) by the Institut national de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies pour l’Environnement et l’Agriculture (IRSTEA) on “Facilitating cooperatives of local actors promoting climate change adaptation on the field: experiences, innovative tools and future perspectives”.

The event aimed to debate the issue of the traditional institutional actors coming to their limits when faced with climate change, as well as to provide insights on the collective schemes formed by certain individuals when faced with the need to facilitate the necessary transition on the field. Trying to respond to the question of how to collectively develop realistic adaptation plans, Anabel Sanchez shared the experience of BeWater’s participatory approach and mutual learning process during the three-year development of the 4 River Basin Adaptation Plans, with an intensive collaboration between scientists and local societies.

Furthermore, a poster with the BeWater project results featured at the booth of the Tunisian Ministry for Agriculture, Water Resources and Fisheries, throughout the COP22 duration. The poster provided an overview of the BeWater process in the Rmel river basin towards the design of the River Basin Adaptation Plan: the development of a narrative on the current status of the basin, the identification of the local challenges, the formulation of the water management options linked to each challenge, the assessment of the options’ impact, the options’ evaluation based on multiple decision criteria, the assessment of potential synergies and conflicts between the options to be grouped in bundles, the assessment of the optimal timing for implementing the options, as well as the proposed priority adaptation actions localized on the map.

Finally, GWP organized a COP22 side-event on “Youth for Water and Climate: From Commitments to Action” on 8 November 2016, elaborating on how to strengthen youth mobilization and develop bankable youth actor projects with relevant partners. During COP 21, a number of youth networks under the guidance of regional/country GWP partnerships produced a White Paper containing more than 50 recommendations for an increased participation of youth in addressing challenges with regards to water related to health, agriculture, water related disasters and sharing water for different uses. One year later, GWP’s initiative “Youth for Water and Climate” aimed with this event to showcase progress from last year specifically focusing on success stories from the ground, and identify ways to upscale actions.

Meriam Ben Zakour (GWP-Med) joined the event to present to more than 50 youth NGO representatives the experience from the joint GWP-BeWater youth initiative that has been running in Tunisia since mid-2015. BeWater has invested in its involvement with the Tunisian youth in the Rmel river basin and the Zaghouan region, to strengthen their role in water resources management and climate change adaptation. To achieve maximum added value, it linked up with GWP’s “Youth for Water and Climate”.

Source: GWP-Med