Final Report Summary - TWINBASINXN (Promoting Twinning of River Basins for Developing Integrated Water Resources Management Practices)
During the last decade, in the geopolitical context of the European Union or within the framework of the development of Southern countries, many twinnings were undertaken between basin organisations (BOs) to foster the exchange and to improve practices related to the integrated water resources management (IWRM).
Nevertheless, in many cases:
- twinning agreements have not really been really implemented above the 'political' event organised for the signature of the agreement and related communication campaign. Few missions are really realised.
- budget for such 'basic' topics as plane tickets and per diem.
- when twinning exchanges really take place, the positive results generally gained from these experiments are confined at the level of directly involved structures and dissemination step is not sufficient.
In this context, thanks to Sixth Framework Program for European Research (priority 1.1.6.3 'Global change and ecosystems') financed by the European Commission, TWINBASINXN project was launched by the International Network of Basin Organisation (INBO) and the International Office for Water (IOWater) and seems to be quite an innovative tool in the field of the IWRM.
TWINBASINXN aimed at promoting twinning of BOs, capitalising knowledge related to the IWRM, bringing a general and multilateral interest to this type of cooperation, improving on-the-field IWRM practices and catalysing their development at river basin level.
To start its activities, it was relying, under the coordination of the INBO, on a steering committee grouping 17 founder members from all over the world:
- Seine-Normandy Water Agency (France)
- IOWater (France)
- Mediterranean Network of Basin Organizations (Spain)
- Secretariat for Water Resources at the Ministry of the Environment (Brazil)
- Global Water Partnership (Sweden)
- Techware (Italy),
- University of Pretoria (South Africa)
- National Water Authority - OVF (Hungary)
- Interstate Coordination Water Commission ICWC Aral Sea (Uzbekistan)
- Jara Tirta I Corporation (Indonesia)
- African Network of Basin Organizations (Niger)
- Algérois Hodna Soumman Basin Agency (Algeria)
- Sebou River Basin Agency (Morocco)
- Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (OMVS)
- Comisión Nacional del Agua (Mexico)
- National Agency Apele Romane (Romania).
Officially launched in January 2004, during INBO General Assembly (Martinique) for a 48 months contractual session, TWINBASINXN has been supporting more than 175 missions during the 4-years project, of 8 days duration on average. Thus, a large number of basin organisations have been benefiting from good practices and learnt lessons from other basin organisations world-wide.
Conclusion
TWINBASINXN project presents very interesting results:
- the involvement of numerous BOs, representing various and varied geopolitical contexts, targeted by the project;
- the knowledge and experiments, which were brought by these actors and disseminated in coming year;
- the positive assessment of project management and project importance by twinning partners supported;
- the encouragements from mid-term reviewers and sound recommendations they formulated;
- the will to proceed with these twinning with other financial tools in the future;
- the opportunity to improve the practices of IWRM throughout the world.
Without any financial contribution from the project, the TWINBASINXN project manager paid a visit to 10 main BOs involved in twinnings. These missions have been as many opportunities to foster twinning good development and to avoid any future misunderstanding on the working procedures. Moreover, the international image and quality acquired by the project was also a key result.
The project implemented its objectives. It is still capitalising and disseminating acquired knowledge related to the IWRM, resulting directly from twinning experimentations.
Various possibilities have been studied in order to go on fostering exchanges between BOs beside INBO central activities.
A first topic was selected as a priority one by various stakeholders and river BOs during TWINBASINXN project: 'How to develop key performance indicators, for both governance and results of public policies at river basin scale?' Specific efforts were led in order to prepare terms of reference of projects in that sense. One of them was selected by European Water Facility and already started, dedicated to transboundary African river basins.
Nevertheless, in many cases:
- twinning agreements have not really been really implemented above the 'political' event organised for the signature of the agreement and related communication campaign. Few missions are really realised.
- budget for such 'basic' topics as plane tickets and per diem.
- when twinning exchanges really take place, the positive results generally gained from these experiments are confined at the level of directly involved structures and dissemination step is not sufficient.
In this context, thanks to Sixth Framework Program for European Research (priority 1.1.6.3 'Global change and ecosystems') financed by the European Commission, TWINBASINXN project was launched by the International Network of Basin Organisation (INBO) and the International Office for Water (IOWater) and seems to be quite an innovative tool in the field of the IWRM.
TWINBASINXN aimed at promoting twinning of BOs, capitalising knowledge related to the IWRM, bringing a general and multilateral interest to this type of cooperation, improving on-the-field IWRM practices and catalysing their development at river basin level.
To start its activities, it was relying, under the coordination of the INBO, on a steering committee grouping 17 founder members from all over the world:
- Seine-Normandy Water Agency (France)
- IOWater (France)
- Mediterranean Network of Basin Organizations (Spain)
- Secretariat for Water Resources at the Ministry of the Environment (Brazil)
- Global Water Partnership (Sweden)
- Techware (Italy),
- University of Pretoria (South Africa)
- National Water Authority - OVF (Hungary)
- Interstate Coordination Water Commission ICWC Aral Sea (Uzbekistan)
- Jara Tirta I Corporation (Indonesia)
- African Network of Basin Organizations (Niger)
- Algérois Hodna Soumman Basin Agency (Algeria)
- Sebou River Basin Agency (Morocco)
- Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (OMVS)
- Comisión Nacional del Agua (Mexico)
- National Agency Apele Romane (Romania).
Officially launched in January 2004, during INBO General Assembly (Martinique) for a 48 months contractual session, TWINBASINXN has been supporting more than 175 missions during the 4-years project, of 8 days duration on average. Thus, a large number of basin organisations have been benefiting from good practices and learnt lessons from other basin organisations world-wide.
Conclusion
TWINBASINXN project presents very interesting results:
- the involvement of numerous BOs, representing various and varied geopolitical contexts, targeted by the project;
- the knowledge and experiments, which were brought by these actors and disseminated in coming year;
- the positive assessment of project management and project importance by twinning partners supported;
- the encouragements from mid-term reviewers and sound recommendations they formulated;
- the will to proceed with these twinning with other financial tools in the future;
- the opportunity to improve the practices of IWRM throughout the world.
Without any financial contribution from the project, the TWINBASINXN project manager paid a visit to 10 main BOs involved in twinnings. These missions have been as many opportunities to foster twinning good development and to avoid any future misunderstanding on the working procedures. Moreover, the international image and quality acquired by the project was also a key result.
The project implemented its objectives. It is still capitalising and disseminating acquired knowledge related to the IWRM, resulting directly from twinning experimentations.
Various possibilities have been studied in order to go on fostering exchanges between BOs beside INBO central activities.
A first topic was selected as a priority one by various stakeholders and river BOs during TWINBASINXN project: 'How to develop key performance indicators, for both governance and results of public policies at river basin scale?' Specific efforts were led in order to prepare terms of reference of projects in that sense. One of them was selected by European Water Facility and already started, dedicated to transboundary African river basins.