Call to action: share the story of your water and climate resilience journey
The CEO Water Mandate is proud to support the Global Water Partnership (GWP) Water ChangeMaker Awards, which will highlight the stories of the people and organizations who shape water decisions to build climate resilience.
The Water ChangeMaker Awards recognize that the global health crisis and its economic fallout require the full attention of governments, businesses, and citizens at this time. But water management decisions remain essential, particularly in the face of the climate crisis.
What are the Water ChangeMaker Awards?
The Water ChangeMaker Awards underline the crucial relationship between water management and our vulnerability to climate change. GWP and its partners are launching the Awards as a contribution to UNFCCC’s Resilience Frontiers initiative. From a water perspective, the Awards will shed light on frontier issues, technologies, and social trends that will chart a course to sustainability beyond 2030. The Awards seek to highlight decisions that have involved changing mindsets from inertia to action; speaking truth to power; finding new ways of working; building new coalitions; changing laws or policies; mobilizing others to collaborate, and more.
The Water ChangeMaker Awards will catalog and celebrate the change-making journeys of semi-finalists, finalists, and winners to raise awareness of how water management decisions are necessary to further climate resilience.
To celebrate the finalist change journeys, every finalist will be sponsored by GWP to attend the UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 26) in Glasgow, Scotland to participate in an awards ceremony.
However, the mission of the Water ChangeMaker Awards continues beyond the celebration of the winners, finalists, and semi-finalists. In March 2021, GWP’s Technical Committee will launch an analysis of the ChangeMaker Journeys to share their stories on a global stage. GWP’s IWRM ToolBox will serve as a platform for shared learning going into the future, hosting advice and knowledge from around the world.
Who can apply to the Water ChangeMaker Awards?
ChangeMaker initiatives concern water decisions that contribute to climate change resilience. Organizations, entities, and individuals from the public, private, and non-profit sector are all encouraged to apply, and may even complete multiple submissions.
Initiatives can be located anywhere around the world. To be eligible, initiatives must be either ongoing or concluded within the past five years.
Initiatives will be evaluated on the following criteria:
- Climate Resilience built through Water Decisions
- Magnitude & Longevity of Change
- Depth of Learning
- Breadth of Collaboration
Full guidelines on the Water ChangeMaker Awards are available online as a PDF.
How can I apply to the Water ChangeMaker Awards?
To apply to the Water ChangeMaker Awards, visit the Water ChangeMaker site.
The GWP recommends that teams complete their submission well in advance of the June 7, 2020 deadline. Teams are also highly encouraged to quantify their results, submitting data that show the positive effects of their ChangeMaker Journey. Initiatives that make it to the final round will be asked to share more details about their change journey.
The jury works in English, but will accept submissions in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, which will then be translated to English for consideration. Submissions must also include a contact who can provide an informal verification of the project.
