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5 Jun 2023
Somalia floods follow years of drought
Following heavy rains and flooding in March this year, central Somalia again experienced heavy rains in mid-May, killing 22 people and affecting an estimated 450 000 people, of whom 219 000 have been displaced. The long rains, which had provided little relief during the past three years due to an ongoing drought, came early in Somalia this year, arriving in March and April rather than May...
3 Jun 2023
The United Nations Water Conference: a perspective from Action Against Hunger
Introduction The March 2023 Water Conference brought together 170 Member States under the aegis of the United Nations, around various ‘hot’ topics, such as the global governance of the sector, the crisis of access to water, water as common good of humanity, the highly insufficient funding of the sector, particularly in its humanitarian dimension (only 30% of United Nations Humanitarian Response Plans were funded in 2022) and the overall lack of data on the resource...
2 Jun 2023
Tanzania doubles budget for rural water supply
The government of Tanzania has more than doubled its budget allocation to the Rural Water and Sanitation Agency (RUWASA) in Geita district. RUWASA district manager Sande Batakanwa announced this to a meeting of community-based water services organisations, indicating that the government of Tanzania had allocated 4...
2 Jun 2023
European Commission takes Italy to court over lack of urban wastewater treatment
On the 1st of June, the European Commission decided to refer Italy to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for breaching its obligations under the wastewater treatment directive. This decision follows an earlier judgement from the ECJ from 2014 that in 74 urban areas, Italy has been falling behind in its obligations to sufficiently treat urban wastewater before releasing it back into the environment...
1 Jun 2023
Outcomes of Plastics Treaty Negotiations affect Action on Water and Climate
The second meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) for a global Plastics Treaty began in Paris, France on the 29th of May. The meeting is scheduled to continue until June 2nd. This follows from a resolution passed on the 2nd of March 2022 during the fifth United National Environmental Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi...
25 May 2023
AfDB and UK sign U.S. 2 billion agreement for climate projects in Africa
On the 25th of May the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Kingdom (U.K.) signed an agreement to fund up to U.S. $ 2 billion in climate projects in Africa. The agreement was signed in the context of the AfDB annual meeting that took place in Accra, Ghana. At COP 26 in Glasgow, the U.K. had already announced its intention to support the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Programme endorsed by the African Union in order to upscale African plans to increase climate resilience...
25 May 2023
Ecuador completes world’s largest debt for nature swap.
The government of Ecuador has completed the world’s largest debt for nature swap with the support of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) and the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (DFC). The IDB provided a $ 85 million guarantee, while the DFC provided a $ 656 million political risk insurance to purchase the country’s existing debt at better financial terms...
24 May 2023
Women in Water Diplomacy Network Reports on Progress
In April, the Women in Water Diplomacy Network (WWDN) published its 2023 After Action Report which reviews the activities of both its Water Diplomacy Symposium as well as the network’s engagement in the UN 2023 Water Conference. Following the expression in 2022 of its strategic objectives for the period 2022-2017, the WWDN embarked on the implementation of its five point strategy to improve gender equality in high-level decision making in transboundary basins...
22 May 2023
IADB publishes cybersecurity study on water infrastructure in Latin America and the Caribbean
Source of Innovation, a partnership promoted and co-financed by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB), has carried out a study on cybersecurity trends in the water and sanitation sector of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The study involved an assessment of LAC’s water and wastewater infrastructure ‘cybersecurity readiness’ and presents key recommendations for public and private sector actors to increase their organization’s overall cyber resilience...
22 May 2023
Majority of world’s lakes experiencing decline in storage volumes
A research article on global hydrology published in Science on the 18th of May shows that more than half of the large freshwater lakes across the world experienced a decline in storage between 1992 and 2020. The natural volume of the world’s lakes has declined by some 26 Gigatonnes per year (equivalent to the volume of some 10 million Olympic sized swimming pools) over these three decades...
19 May 2023
UN Water’s 2023 Data Drive:
On the 2nd of May, UN Water launched the third round of global data compilation for sustainable development goal 6 (SDG 6) on water to integrate and mainstream the evidence base for global decision making on water and sanitation, the 2023 Data Drive. This third data drive is taking place against the background of a marked improvement over time in the breadth and depth of national reporting on SDG6 since the first data drive in 2016/2017 and the second in 2019/2020: the size and quality of the global data set guiding national and international decision making on water has improved steadily since the launch of the 2030 Agenda in 2015...
18 May 2023
66% likelihood of temperatures reaching 1.5⁰C above normal in the next five years
On the 16th of May, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) announced that there is a 66% likelihood that the average global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one year. There is also a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record...