DAY3 - Wednesday 23rd of March

The session intends to feature the effects of agroecology in irrigation schemes seeking to redesign food systems while preserving on the diversity of ecosystems. It will also present specific responses to water scarcity in the context of marginal lands and climate change. Favoring sustainability of natural resources and governance, protection of smallholder farmers and food security and line with the "One Water, One Health approach", agroecology optimizes mutually beneficial interactions between plants, animals, humans and the environment.

Floods and droughts are some of the most tangible and devastating consequences of the climate crisis. The World Bank, Deltares, and the World Meteorological Organization’s Associated Program for Flood Management (APFM) and Integrated Drought Management Program (IDMP) have teamed up to further explore and operationalize the potential of leveraging synergies in the management of floods and drought.

The "Dakar 2021 Initiative" aims, during the preparatory phase of the Forum, to select, label and popularize relevant, innovative, structuring and replicable national, regional and international projects, producing short-term results with a sustainable impact around the Forum's priorities, and whose purpose is to contribute to the acceleration of the achievement of the SDGs, and more particularly of SDG6.
The Dakar 2022 Initiative is the materialization of the vision: "From commitment to implementation of concrete actions on the ground".

The development of mining activity in West Africa has been unprecedented since the 2000s. The artisanal and semi-industrial sectors involve more than 6 million people. This number is steadily increasing. Significant revenues are received. However, social tensions and considerable environmental impacts are generated, at different spatial and temporal scales, which need to be better understood in order to provide sustainable control solutions built and accepted by all stakeholders.

With a steady increase in climate finance flow from developed to developing countries, there is a growing need to rigorously measure the real-term additionality, the consistency and ultimately the impacts on final beneficiaries in real terms. Increasing the effectiveness of drought finance is of vital interest for both financing partners and communities, whose inherent heterogeneity and diverse needs put a constraint on harmonizing the financing mechanisms and call for more flexible and innovative approaches.

The session will bring together stakeholders from both water and security sectors and scientists working on analyzing water-security linkages, with the objective of sharing insights and identifying next steps in actions to tackle water-related security risks based on a shared understanding of water-security linkages. With examples from ongoing work in Mali, Niger and Chad.

This event will guide you through innovative financing approaches for NbS in developing countries and provide practical guidelines to develop business models for NbS projects based on the market study commissioned by Team International Organisations.

Building on IWRM, the WWC IWRM/transversality Task Force is working on a new vision of water management with the aim to have an impact on the delivery of SDGs, identify the barriers to scale up, and provide a systemic vision and clear directions towards equity in allocation of water across sectoral needs through dialogue and tradeoffs discussions with stakeholders (local communities, public and private sectors, academia, and governing bodies, etc.). Exploring the interlinkages between water, energy, food, health, and education will help in achieving synergies between these sectors.

Despite the progress made in recent years, more than 2 billion people in the world still lack access to water safely managed, and almost half of the world population do not have access to safe sanitation. The Covid-19 pandemic has evidenced even more the imperative need for such basic services and the insufficiency of funds committed to that matter. Finance is a decisive mean to increase Water Security and to provide water services to all.