Friday, March 12, 2010

Actions for TWC

Information & Consultation Services

  • Offer useful information and consultation services for sustainable TW management for countries
  • Engineering and technical advising
  • Environmental consultation
  • “Opening” information
  • Encouraging the sharing of information
  • Facilitating “informed” water management

  1. COLLECTING INFORMATION
-       Scientific facts
-       Mutual facts
-       Rumours
-       Beliefs
-       Attitudes
-       Assumptions

  1. ORGANIZING INFORMATION
-       Cultural & religious traditions
-       Area & boarders
-       Political ideologies
-       Conflicts & history
-       Media
-       Relationship between national & global

  1. CONNECTING INFORMATION
-       Inter-linkages between different aspects
-       Understanding the whole picture

EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT ASPECTS
SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT: INFO & ASPECTS
-       Experiences on transboundary issues
-       Peoples’ needs
-       Reasons for opposition and resistance (not always environmental!)
CULTURAL ENVIRONMENT: INFO & ASPECTS
-       Behavior
-       Political culture (getting support by joining people’s opinions)
-       Media: sensational or objective?
SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL: INFO & ASPECTS
-       Synergy between industry & community
-       BAT and beyond that
-       Monitoring
-       Scenarios
-       Biological & geographical background
ECONOMICAL BACKGROUND: INFO & ASPECTS
-       Who uses water and for what?
-       Municipal
-       Industry
-       Agriculture & food production
-       Navigation
POLITICAL: INFO & ASPECTS
-       Institutions in transboundary area: weak or strong; i.e. courruption rate
-       Political culture
-       Geopolitics
-       Relations between different institutions in the riparian countries (both national and transboundary level) -> How well different stakeholders communicate? Is the lack of communication due to cultural behavior? Hierarchies? I.e. governmental officials & private sector do not communicate or cooperate in some cultures.

Promotion

-       Promoting fair TW usage
-       Publish a journal on TW matters

Education & Research

-       Scientific research
-       Assisting with education (in Universities): courses, seminars, theses (bachelor, master, doctoral)
-       Offering and education programme on TW issues: doctoral theses, post grad school?

Crisis Management

-       Suggesting dispute resolving strategy
-       Work with riparian countries to preserve culture & environment in TW areas
-       Offer conflict-solving services for countries: CMI provides?

Legislations & Governance

-       Promoting UN Water Convention as a framework for regional agreements?
-       Give advice to river basin organizations about TW agreements
-       Assist in creating sustainable water policies & technical policies
-       Legal advicing: How to update and implement the environmental laws? How to intergrate the UN Convention into local legislation?
-       Assist in institutional strengthening
-       Basin commissions?
-       “Water bodies”
Here, also an active part could be implemented:
-       Initiating states to ratify UN Water Convention
-       Organizing a governmental summit creating proceedings around TW issues; creating a TW protocol (compare with climate change issues and global activity there!)

Platform

All above-mentioned actions are necessary for a global platform. TWC would work as a connecting platform in different TW issues:
-       Helping the exchange of ideas and views: governmental level decision making (politics, science)
-       Organizing seminars, meetings, events for different TW actors (countries, industry…)
-       Facilitating participation on a local and regional level
-       Organizing negotiations between riparian states in TW areas (especially due to conflicts)
-       Meetings between (TW-) riparian countries’ governments (this could be the summit mentioned under Governance-topic)

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