EWP to be European Coordinator of the Water Action Hub
(Brussels/New York/Oakland, 22 March 2013) – To mark World Water Day 2013 and in the spirit of the 2013 Year of Water Cooperation, Brussels-based NGO European Water Partnership (EWP) and the UN Global Compact’s CEO Water Mandate announced a new partnership today. The two organizations are joining efforts to launch the Water Action Hub (“the Hub”) in European basins.
At Stockholm World Water Week in August of last year, the CEO Water Mandate launched the Hub as a platform to facilitate match-making amongst a range of organizations interested in improving water management in regions around the world. It does so via an easy to use online platform that connects and filters a range of interconnected data. Users of the Hub can organize data and find potential collaborators through a range of means including by: action areas, geographies, local challenges, specific existing projects and types of partner organizations. Simple maps that visually place salient water projects accompany this information. Supplementing these maps and data sets is basin-specific information that informs collective action.
“In the short time since its launch, the Water Action Hub has made extraordinary inroads in helping businesses and other organizations to collaborate on water-related initiatives,” said Gavin Power, UN Global Compact Deputy Director and Head of the CEO Water Mandate. “We are very pleased to welcome the European Water Partnership as coordinator of the Hub in Europe, which will add critical expertise and new opportunities for engagement throughout the region.”
“We are very excited about this new partnership and for the Hub’s continued growth and expansion,” said Jason Morrison, Technical Director of the CEO Water Mandate and Program Director at the Pacific Institute. “The Hub’s expansion to Europe and the partnership with EWP signifies the continued need for effective collaboration in order to address today’s most pressing water challenges.”
The Hub’s vision is to promote greater collaboration and partnership amongst a wide array of stakeholders who have compatible water objectives either at global or local levels. This may include working to reduce water quality impacts, promote more efficient water use, or improve water governance, amongst an array of possible issue areas. The Hub serves to facilitate further collective actions by enabling users to search for one another based on their interests and creating opportunities to build partnerships amongst regional actors. Users of the Water Action Hub are able to not only promote their own existing projects and interest areas for prospective collaboration in a basin(s), but they can also directly link to other initiatives present on the Hub in order to expand their networks and/or resources. For organizations looking to establish a collective action in a particular geography/region, the Hub allows these users to maximize their resources by choosing partners with the most closely aligned interests or objectives.
In addition to acting as a match-maker and furthering EU specific water initiatives, the Water Action Hub also serves as a resource for water tools and basin specific information. Fritz Barth of European Water Partnership expressed that “We at EWP see the potential for the Water Action Hub to benefit the dissemination of Best Management Practices for EU-relevant topics and to assist companies in compliance with legislation such as the Water Framework Directive by promoting river basin management and stakeholder participation”. Hub organizers will assist in communicating the addition of new organizations and projects, furthering awareness of these activities to a range of interests.
EWP has established itself as a leader in constituting partnerships between water management entities at a river basin level and will engage with an extensive targeted network in order to promote concrete projects in European river basins. EWP realizes the potential to utilize the Hub to disseminate knowledge gathered from several of its projects (i.e. European Water Stewardship implementation, Local Deals), strengthen existing partnerships in Europe, and initiate further partnerships at a river basin level. Additionally, EWP will integrate its knowledge and partners involved in the EU water policy agenda by developing river basin profiles and assisting in the strategic roll-out of the Hub in Europe. Doing so will provide river basin authorities with knowledge of the extensive networks and organizations working on river basin-related activities. EWP and the CEO Water Mandate understand the positive impacts that collaborative activities can have on water quality, availability and ecosystems throughout Europe.
About the European Water Partnership (EWP)
EWP provides broad coordination on water by bringing stakeholders together and improving awareness and participation in Europe. It harnesses European capacity via coordination of initiatives and activities in international water issues and undertakes worldwide promotion of European expertise related to water. The ultimate goal of the EWP is to elaborate strategies and implement concrete actions to achieve the objectives of the Water Vision for Europe.
Contacts
Sabine von Wirén-Lehr
European Water Partnership, Brussels, Belgium
s.von-wiren-lehr@ewp.eu
+32 2 735 06 81
Gavin Power
UN Global Compact, New York, USA
powerg@un.org
+1 212-963-4681
Jason Morrison
Pacific Institute, Oakland, CA, USA
jmorrison@pacinst.org
+1 510-251-1600
