World Water Week: Outcomes from GWI partners

World Water Week (WWW) in Stockholm was attended by GWI Director Prof Greg Leslie, presenting an opportunity to catch up and converse with many international partners and collaborators. The Source to Sea Partnership and the Asia Pacific Water Forum have since released statements and updates, building on conversations, decisions and sessions held during World Water Week.

The Source to Sea (S2S) Platform has released a statement that was produced as an outcome of the Source-to-Sea Day, organised by partners of the Action Platform for Source to Sea Management during WWW. The Statement is a call to action to the ocean community to ‘look upstream’ in addressing their greatest challenges, suggesting a need for closer cooperation between the ocean and freshwater communities so that important decisions about land use, water resources, coastal development, and marine resources are not made in silos.

The Asia-Pacific Water Forum (APWF) has published a summary of four Asia Focus Sessions held during WWW on water cycle management, rural water and sanitation, governance, and finance. In the rural water and sanitation session, Prof Leslie presented on the development of a community-owned groundwater treatment plant in Sri Lanka, led by UNSW’s Impact Engineers. The APWF summary states that all four sessions highlighted the important role of political leadership that shapes sustainable policies, promotes reforms of institutional architecture, facilitates practical actions on the ground, reviews and selects the best available and appropriate technologies, and monitors the effects and impacts of them. The outputs of the four sessions will be reflected in the thematic design and declaration documents for the 4th APWS in Kumamoto City of Japan, October 19-20, 2020. Presentations from the four Asia Focus Sessions can be accessed on the Asian Development Bank Knowldge Events website.