Twin rivers team up to improve wetlands
The New Year brought the kicked-off of WETwin, a project to enhance the role of wetlands in integrated water resources management in the European Union, Africa and South America. The project, involving a consortium of nine international partners including UNESCO-IHE, will identify strategies and propose solutions for integrating wetlands into river basin management and planning.
Wetlands are often crucial elements in river basins. Efficient and cost-effective nutrient reduction and water storage capacities of wetlands make it possible to utilize them for drinking water supply and sanitation all over the basin.
By analysing technical and institutional set-ups, assessing ecosystem functions and values of wetlands, increasing expert exchange and knowledge transfer, WETwin aims to increase the capacity of people and organisations to manage wetlands and river basins in an integrated way.
The partners from Austria, Belgium, Ecuador, Germany, The Netherlands, Hungary, South Africa, Uganda and Mali work in ‘triangular’ cooperation in a so-called twinning approach. Twinning is a form of cooperation in which institutions and organizations are part of twinned partners’ external world, so that the entire institutional framework can be made to function more efficiently and democratically.
Government institutions and other stakeholders can profit from peer opinions regarding administrative, scientific-technical and/or institutional aspects coming from sister organizations managing a basin in another geographical, political or economic context, as well as assisting in the decision-making process.
The WETwin project funded by the European Commission gives a special focus to South-South cooperation and ensures environmental sustainability in the context of international cooperation.
Date published: 02 January 2008