COP 21- Alex Malawi, Global Water Partnership, Sweden

The University of Earth: Urgent Action Series: COP 21 Paris 2015: Alex Malawi, Global Water Partnership, Sweden, Country Water Stores and Water Security

The Global Water Partnership is an Intergovernmental Organisation, that supports countries to water security. They are a partnership organisation composed of different other partners, that come from industry, the private sector, government organisations as well as Academia. They are present in thirteen different regions around the world, in Latin America, Carribean, Africa as well as Asia and Europe. They are at the Climate Change negotiations, basically to promote the importance of water security in Climate Change, because the scientific evidence is very clear that there are increases in floods, increasing frequency of droughts around the world and for instance, sea levels have risen by 19 cm between 1900 and 2010. So it’s no longer contested that climate change is real. The change is real and it is manifested through water resources management, and for countries that do not have good water supply systems in place, like South Africa for instance, which is experiencing droughts, this is a major problem and South Africa is not alone. The whole of Southern Africa is experiencing a heat wave.

This, unfortunately, is the new norm, and what world leaders need to do, what the climate change negotiators need to do, is to think about how water management resources are supported. So as the Global Water Partnership, they were there to advise, to provide support to the parties, to the governments as they negotiate and to give them the evidence and the arguments that they need to ensure that water management is given a higher profile in the negotiations.

They are very optimistic that COP 21 might be able to deliver to deliver something more positive that they have seen in the past, partly because of the scientific evidence…