Third World Centre for Water Management

MEETINGS 2011

1st Berlin Water Dialogues, 4-5 May 2011, Berlin, Germany. On May 4-5, 2011 the Berlin Water Dialogues took place for the first time. Leading experts from water and water-associated sectors were invited to discuss current and future solutions for water management problems from their own perspectives. The invitational meeting provided an excellent forum for the exchange of knowledge and experience as well as for networking.

The main questions were:

What can businesses and industries contribute to a sustained and future-oriented management of water resources in a globalised world?

What are necessary prerequisites and limiting factors in this context – where could flexibilities and vulnerabilities be identified?

What are the industry’s expectations towards political and state actors and how can the cooperation with research and the providers of water technology be optimised?

The event was supported by the German Federal Ministries for the Environment and for Development, the German Academy for Science and Engineering Acatech, the Climate-KIC innovation network and the Berlin Centre of Competence for Water KWB. It took place under the auspices of the Governing Mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit; Initiators: Messe Berlin, Berlinwasser, Berlin Senate Department for Economics, Technology and Women’s issues, Third World Centre for Water Management and TRIAD. For more information visit the official website of the event

IV International Experts Meeting on Water Management and Climate Change: Dealing with Uncertainties, February 28th - March 2nd, 2011, Zaragoza, Spain. There is now scientific consensus that the world's climate will steadily change over the next several decades. While there is consensus on the impacts of global warming and its impacts in terms of overall changes in the climatic patterns, scientific forecasts of how it will affect precipitation and streamflows over specific units of water management, like river basins, are fraught with many uncertainties.

Due to complex interactions of changes in the hydrological cycle with global circulation patterns and regional and local weather patterns, increase in energy in the hydrological cycle will not necessarily translate into an increase or decrease in precipitation in different geographical regions. At the present state of knowledge, it is difficult to predict possible changes in even annual average precipitation with any degree of reliability over specific units of water management. The uncertainties rapidly increase when information that is absolutely critical for proper water planning and management cannot be predicted such as the total amount and form of precipitation (rain or snow), their seasonal timings, and their intra-annual changes from year to year. Overall, precipitation may increase or decrease thus changing the current water availability patterns. In addition, the current seasonality may change significantly in many parts of the world and make water management a very difficult and complex process.

The workshop will bring together some of the world’s leading water experts on water and climate change to discuss issues like:

Which water management practices can be modified to cope with climatic and other related changes over the next two to three decades which can be considered as a transition period?
What type of strategies may be available, or can be developed, to cope with the current and expected uncertainties during this transition period?
What type of new water management tools and more reliable climate change models over smaller geographical areas can be developed for more efficient water planning and management practices?
What could be the new types of water management strategies that could be applied for specific river basins? What could be the processes by which such strategies could be developed?
What could be a priority research agenda in terms of dealing with climatic uncertainties adequately and practically in terms of efficient water management?
What could be some of the current good practices that may be considered for adoption to deal with the current and expected climate uncertainties?

The workshop will produce a very definitive book on water and climate. It should be noted that such a practical and policy-oriented book simply does not exists at present. This would add to the global visibility and credibility of CIAMA for producing a unique product. Programme, Conference Report

International Workshop on Water Pricing and Public-Private Partnership, May 9-11, Granada, Spain. A main objective of the proposed workshop is to analyse water pricing and cost recovery, and the roles of the public and the private sectors in urban water provisioning in an objective, critical, undogmatic and dispassionate manner. If there are other policy instruments which could be found that could make urban water use efficient, equitable and environmentally desirable, these should be considered equally with pricing as a tool for sustainable water management. It would also be noted that financial and economic views on pricing have different objectives. The financial views on pricing are in the context of cost recovery only whereas economic views on pricing are in terms of changing the behaviour of the consumers, including their appreciation of the issue of the scarcity value of water. The workshop will discuss the above issues as well as achievement of cost recovery targets. It would be further assumed that pricing is not a single option, but it includes a range of options. For example, marginal cost pricing is of course one important option, but there are many other options, including provision of initial allotment of water for everyone, with very targeted subsidies only for the poor, or to provide water on the basis of least environmental impacts. These issues will be comprehensively examined during the Workshop on the basis of the experiences from different parts of the world. More information, Programme, Conference Report

MEETINGS 2009

Special Session on Water Management beyond 2020 for a Rapidly Changing World, March 17, 2009, World Water Forum, Istanbul. Global conditions, throughout history, have always changed. However the rates of these changes during the past 2 to 3 decades have steadily accelerated, especially when compared to the historical past. The current indications are that these rates of changes are likely to accelerate dramatically during the coming two decades which will make water management processes and practices increasingly more complex than ever before witnessed in human history. We thus need solutions for "business unusual" conditions.

Water management is an integral part of the global system. It has always been affected by the changes in other development sectors like food, energy, environment and industrialization. In turn, water sector affects developments in all these sectors. Future water management thus must be seen within the context of an overall framework on accelerating changes and increasing interrelationships between the relevant development sectors, institutions and actors.

What are likely to be very different during the next 20 years will be new issues like globalization; free trade; rates of technological advances in areas as diverse as biotechnology and desalination; information and communication revolution; demographic transitions; migration (both intra- and inter-country), HIV/AIDS, concurrent quests for food, energy and environmental security at the national and regional levels; changing development paradigms, and increasing uncertainties that will be brought about by issues like evolving societal needs and public attitudes and perceptions and also climate change. All these and other related factors will affect water management through numerous pathways, some direct but others indirect, some known but others unknown, some measurable but others intangible, and on which the water profession is likely to have limited or no control in the future.

Leading international experts from different sectors and disciplines are specially invited to review and assess the changes that are likely to occur by 2020 and beyond, which must be considered and addressed to adequately by the water profession. How should water management change in order that these future problems and implications can be handled successfully, efficiently, equitably, and also simultaneously to ensure that human and ecosystems needs for an expanding and more resource consuming global population can be met? Such a future-oriented session has never been organized within the context of not only any of the previous World Water Forums but also at any other global meeting.

This Special Session is sponsored by the Third World Centre for Water Management, Middle East Technical University (METU), International Centre for Water and Environment (CIAMA) of Zaragoza, International Water Resources Association (IWRA), State Hydraulic Works (DSI) of Turkey and Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy of Singapore. Session Programme, Summary

Partners' Forum Water Governance in the MENA Region: Policies and Institutions, June 7–11 2009, Dead Sea, Jordan. InWEnt, Capacity Building International, Germany, and the Arab Water Council are implementing an 8-year programme (2005–2012) on capacity building in the water sector for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region, with special emphasis on Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Yemen. The first phase of this Programme ended in 2008. The Second one covers the period 2009–2012. The Third World Centre for Water Management has been providing expert advice to InWEnt and the Arab Water Council on the formulation and implementation of this programme from its very beginning in 2005.

The first Partners' Forum, under the Second Phase of the programme: "Water Governance in the MENA Region: Policies and Institutions" was organised in Dead Sea Marriott Hotel, Jordan, 7-11 June 2009, where participants from the eight focus countries were present. The participants represented different disciplines and water sectors, and also appropriate governmental institutions, research and training organisations, private sector and NGOs. Programme, Policy Brief, Conference Report

International Workshop on Water Governance, June 25, 2009, Singapore. Within the overall context of the Singapore International Water Week (SIWW), a workshop is being organized on water governance at the Lee Kuan Yew School for Public Policy, by the School and the Third World Centre for Water Management.

It is now being increasingly recognized that the world has enough water to meet its needs, provided the available water resources are governed efficiently. However, poor water governance in most parts of the world, both in developed and developing countries, are creating serious water-related problems. These problems can be successfully analysed and solved with existing knowledge, technology, management and experience. However, because of poor water governance practices of the past have already contributed to the development of many serious water problems in most parts of the world. Most unfortunately, the governance practices are improving only incrementally in most countries. If the world’s water problems are to be solved, business unusual practices have to be formulated and implemented. One of the main prerequisites has to be rapid improvements in the level of existing water governance.

The proposed workshop reviews the current concepts of water governance, their strengths, weaknesses and constraints, and how best governance practices can be improved in terms of water resources management in general and urban water management in particular. Session Programme, Summary, Brainstorming Session Report

III International Expert's Meeting on Water Quality Management, November 9–11, Zaragoza, Spain. During the past decade, considerable global attention has been given on potential physical scarcities of water to meet various global needs in the coming years. Many have argued that by 2030, much of the world’s people will be living in regions having serious water stress. Research conducted at the Third World Centre for Water Management indicated that this scenario is incorrect. The world has adequate water, if this resource can be properly managed. If the world faces a water crisis in the future, this will most likely occur not because of physical scarcities of water, but due to continued neglect of water quality. According to the work carried out by the Centre, only about 10% of the point sources of pollution in Latin America are at present adequately treated and then disposed of in an environmentally safe way. The situation is likely to be similar in developing Asian countries, and probably somewhat worse in Africa. The non-point sources of pollution in the developing world are now basically neglected. Consequently, water bodies in developing countries in and around urban centres are heavily contaminated. Appearance of dead zones in estuaries of major rivers, even in developed countries, like the Mississippi in the United States, has already became a most serious issue because of non-point sources of pollution. Despite considerable rhetoric during the past decades, water quality management is still not receiving adequate attention. The Workshop considers different aspects of water quality management from different parts of the world, from different perspectives, including emerging issues like endocrine disruptors. It considers social, economic, environmental, legal and institutional aspects of water quality management, both of the present and the future. The governance aspects of water quality are receiving special attention. The Workshop is being sponsored by the International Centre for Water and Environment (CIAMA), Zaragoza, Spain, the Third World Centre for Water Management and the International Water Resources Association. Programme, Conference Report

International Workshop on Governance of Transboundary Water Bodies of Latin America (rivers, lakes and aquifers), November 23-24, 2009, Campo Grande, Brazil. It has often been fashionable in recent years to speak of water wars and political and social conflicts over water. The hypothesis of this meeting is that through proper inter-institutional coordinating mechanisms, the countries sharing the same water bodies can benefit significantly more through cooperation rather than through conflicts. Even though management of transboundary rivers, lakes and aquifers are considered important at present, a comparative and objective study of the efficacy of the institutions to manage such basins efficiently is still conspicuous by its absence. It is thus necessary to conduct a systematic and comprehensive objective analysis of the existing transboundary river and lake basins organisations and transboundary aquifers management institutions to determine their relative successes and failures, and the reasons thereof. Through this process, a community of good practices for sustainable water resources management can be reliably identified, and their potential replicability could be considered for case-specific situations of transboundary water management in Latin America. A few examples from outside Latin America are also discussed to consider their potential application in the region

During the workshop, 8–10 major transboundary freshwater bodies are analysed from the appropriate Latin American countries. While considerable efforts have been made in the past to analyse the transboundary water bodies of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East (for example, Ganges, Indus, Mekong, Salween, Nile, Zambezi, Rhine, Danube and Jordan), commensurate emphasis has not been given on the study of the Latin American transboundary water bodies. To the extent these have been studied in Latin America, the primary focuses have been on the major rivers like the Amazon or the Plata: smaller transboundary rivers, lakes and groundwater bodies have not received adequate attention. Programme

LIST OF MEETINGS ORGANIZED BY THE CENTRE SINCE 1998-2011, PDF Document