R-KNOW Water Governance Best Practices within the Water, Energy, Food and Climate Change Nexus: Knowledge for SDG Action in West Asia and North Africa

Description

• The Regional Knowledge Network on Systemic Approaches to Sustainable Water Resources Management (R-KNOW) forms part of IUCN ROWA’s Regional Programme on Water Resources and Climate Change and is implemented in close cooperation with a number of key partners in the MENA Water Sector, such as CEDARE in Egypt, PHG in Palestine, SPNL in Lebanon, AWO in Jordan, UAE in Morocco, and EMWIS in France. R-KNOW has been started as a project funded by the European Union (EU) (2013-2015) to assist in strengthening the application of systematic approaches to sustainable water resources management in five countries (Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Morocco and Egypt) and to share all relevant knowledge on these issues.
  Over time R-KNOW has slightly shifted focus to better emphasize the needs for local water
  governance and participatory approaches to water resource management, while embedding
  such approaches more recently within the broader arenas of Ecosystem-based Management
  and a Water, Energy, Food and Climate Change Adaptation Nexus. The partners in R-KNOW
  have the firm commitment to pursue their collaboration and notably through activities that
  contribute to a strong R-KNOW (http://www.rknow.net) that actively contributes to meeting
  Sustainable Development Goals as have been defined in 2015.
  The core of this knowledge is the information collected on practical implementation of such
  systemic approaches in relevant pilot projects in different contexts. As lessons learnt were not sufficiently shared among those intending to apply systemic approaches, it was deemed necessary to make an inventory of and synthesise the information about the experiences already made for others to refer and learn from1.
  As part of R-KNOW’s Knowledge Strategy for creating and sharing knowledge, knowledge
  products will be developed for its different Sustainable Water Resources Management (SWRM)Themes. This document is the first in a series of R-KNOW knowledge products, bringing together work done in the domain of sustainable water resources management through integrated and participatory development approaches.
  This document will share with a broad audience of practitioners and policy makers, notably
  in the West Asia and Mediterranean regions, what integrated approaches are necessary to
  make water resources management and climate change resilience actions a success. It
  will describe the underlying conceptual framework of these different approaches that underpin
  successful actions in the four Thematic Areas distinguished within the R-KNOW:
  (i) Local Water Governance,
  (ii) Climate Change and Water,
  (iii) Water, Food and Energy Nexus, and
  (iv) Innovative & Sustainable Water Technologies.