Both ENDS

News / 2 September 2014

New headquarters

Our West-African partners in Integral Water Resource Management are rapidly taking steps forward. In Lomé (Togo) they have founded their own regional headquarters. The proud name of the center is ‘AfriwaterCoP’ ( Community of Practice). They strive to bring together stakeholders such as farmers, fishermen, companies and authorities for fair and sustainable use of river water. Slowly but surely they also convince more and more government officials that all these stakeholders should be able to think along and take part in the decision process.  This should be adopted in rules and regulations of regional and national law in the concerning provinces and states.

Negotiated Approach
For many years, this ‘all parties involved model’ or ‘Negotiated Approach’ as we call it, has been promoted and practiced by Both ENDS and its partners in countries like India, Indonesia and Costa Rica. For us, the time was right to try to expand the method to Africa. We brought together a number of African organisations that want to implement the Negotiated Approach in the river basins they work in.
 
Coordination
One of the results is the newly established AfriwaterCoP. Kenyan born Annette Luttah is the new coordinator of the Community of Practice. She graduated in Environmental Planning and Management and is a former employee of UNEP and JVE International. She will focus on communication (website and case description) and the recruitment of new partners for the network.  We are happy that the Negotiated Approach is materialising in Africa and we will keep supporting this initiative.

 

More:

Our video on the Negotiated Approach

Fact sheet Negotiated Approach

Visit of our African partners to the Netherlands

"Water Security for all? Participatory IWRM in Africa": casedescriptions from our African partners

More information on the Negotiated Approach

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