GWSP at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali
Side event on Vulnerability, Adaptation, Resilience: Cutting-Edge Science for Informed Decisions

Global Catchment Initiative: Bringing the Global Perspective to River Basin Research and Management
1st Expert Group meeting on 7-8 February 2008, Bonn, Germany

For its 2007-2010 project phase the GWSP launched three Global Initiatives. One of these initiatives is the Global Catchment Initiative (GCI) for which the GWSP SSC defined the following goals and objectives:

a) Advance the state of scientific understanding of the global water system through a worldwide study of catchments

b) Encourage researchers working on a catchment level to address questions associated with the global water system not normally addressed in catchment studies

c) Identify regional feedbacks between the hydrologic system, the terrestrial environment, the climate system, and governance regimes

d) Develop new ideas for adapting to undesirable global changes on the river basin scale, and to communicate these ideas to policymakers and other stakeholders.

The first meeting of the Expert Group of GWSP’s new Global Catchment Initiative was held February 7/8, 2008 in Bonn. 20 participants from UNESCO’s HELP and FRIEND initiatives, the CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water and Food, the GLOWA programme, and further scholars from natural and social science disciplines discussed the scope of the initiative, identified research questions and case study catchments and agreed on an agenda for the next 2 years. The meeting report and further information will be available soon.

The meeting report and further information will be available soon.

Workshop on Global Water Governance

On June 20-23 2006 the GWSP organised an international workshop in Bonn, Germany. The key objectives of the workshop were to identify (a) institutions, actors and scales which are of key relevance for enhancing adaptive capacity of governance regimes towards global environmental change, and (b) how governance regimes can be enabled to strengthen the adaptive capacity and resilience of the global water system.

The 38 participants of the international workshop came from all over the world and from backgrounds such as political science, international relations, geography, economics, law and anthropology.

Further information and workshop programme & presentations are available here.

Training the New Generation of Global Water Researchers: Advanced (Educational) Institute on “Global Environmental Change and Water”

• Promoted by START and supported by the IHDP projects IDGEC and IT
• Jointly hosted by the Free University of Amsterdam and UNESCO-IHE, Delft
• Training, research, and mentoring program for top young scientists from developing countries
• Longer term: Comprehensive educational program for young global water researchers

Further information

A Global Study of Environmental Flows

• How to satisfy societal demands for food and water without degrading river ecosystems and aquatic biodiversity?
• What are the discharge and ecological water quality requirements that sustain aquatic ecosystems and meet societal demands world-wide?
• Short-term: Review and assessment of case studies and concepts at several workshops on Environmental Flows
• Longer term: Development of robust sets of global environmental flow indicators on river ecosystem health providing new insights into tradeoffs between water for nature and water for society.

Further information

GWSP - LOICZ Collaboration

The aim of this activity is to develop joint activities in order to promote joint research on global change and the global estuarine environment. Potential areas of cooperation are:

• Comparing Governance of freshwater and coastal systems
• Improving scientific understanding of saltwater intrusion on coastal processes
• Assessing the impact of river diversions and climate change on coastal processes
• Analyzing the impact of land use change, in particular mega-city growth, on coastal processes
• Identifying and comparing environmental flows of freshwater and estuarine systems
• Characterizing large-scale nutrient cycles

Further information

World Water Balance

Objectives of the first harmonized comparison of world water balance estimates from different research communities (world water modelers, climate modelers, global water use researchers):

• identify the range of estimates of the world's water balance
• explain the differences in these estimates
• promote further cooperative research on the world's water balance

Contribution to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) meeting

Further information

Case studies in cooperation with other initiatives, such as the Northern Eurasian Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI)

The primary goal of GWSP regional Case Studies is to develop an ongoing network of international collaborations, with the express aim of understanding how water system changes in different parts of the world are manifested, uncovering similarities, and drawing global-scale conclusions. As for any GWSP activity, these studies should have strong and co-balanced emphasis on the physical, biological, chemical and human dimensions of water system change.

Further information:

• Generic description
• NEESPI case study

For further information on the GWSP activities please contact the International Project Office.

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