The International Research and Training Center on Erosion and Sedimentation (IRTCES) held Silver Jubilee Celebration and Seminar on Integrated River Basin Management under Global Climate Change, on July 29, 2009, in Beijing, PR China. It also held International Advanced Training Workshop on Integrated River Basin Management from July 27 to August 3, 2009.

IRTCES was jointly set up by the Government of PR China and UNESCO in 1984 and is UNESCO water-related Category Ⅱ center, and it is a NARBO member (as Inter Regional Knowledge Partner).

IRTCES Silver Jubilee Ceremony was held with tne presense of Mr. Chen Lei, Minister of Water Resources of PR China and Mr. W. R. Erderen, Assistant Director General of UNESCO (IRTCES). In the Seminar on Integrated River Basin Management, 4 keynote lectures were provided. Mr. Erderen was also a lecturer and introduced ‘IWRM Guideline at River Basin Level’ in his lecture. He also mentioned that the Guideline project was conducted with support from NARBO.

International Advanced Training Workshop on Integrated River Basin Management was held as a back to back event of IRTCES Silver Jubilee Celebration. 52 participants (includes 28 international participants) attended both the Siver Jubilee Celebration and International Advanced Training Workshop. Japan Water Agency (JWA), as a NARBO Secretariat, dispatched 4 experts to held a session on IWRM Guidelines at River Level in the Training Workshop.

Session on IWRM Guidelines at River Basin Level was held on 14:00-17:00, July 30, 2009. 28 International participants gathered from various countries such as Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, DPRK, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Romania, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Uganda, and Uzbekistan, and 24 domestic participants attended the session. 4 experts dispatched from JWA held the session at the request of IRTCES through UNESCO and UNESCO Beijing Office. The session was composed of 4 sub-sessions.

Session 1 comprised Opening Remarks, Introduction to background of the Guidelines Project, presentation of the Guidelines Part 1 and Q&A session. At the Opening Remarks, Dr. Kentaro Kido, JWA expert, introducted NARBO and JWA. He also introduced one participant from Sri Lanka to other participants. The person is Mr. K. W. Ivan de Silva, Vice Chairperson of NARBO. He attended the workshop as an activity of UNESCO national commission of Sri Lanka.
Participants actively asked questions to our presentation. Major questions regarding session 1 is as follows;

• (1) Has the Guidelines already introduced to the training program?
• (2) How to make the highest position of decision maker understand importance of IWRM?
• (3) How to utilize the Guidelines in the trans-boundary issues?

Mr. Ivan de Silva made a comment on trans-boundary issues that education of IWRM to all people can finally leads to the solution of the challanges in the future, and that we have to try to work hard for IWRM within their countries respectively now.

Theme of Session 2 is introduction of Part 2 of the Guidelines and sector perspectives. Particiants, on the whole, agreed to the necessity of sector perspectives in implementing IWRM and some example description of sector perspectives provided in the Guidelines.

Session 3 focused on IWRM Process with IWRM Spiral and Key for Success. I (Mr. Takano) made a presentation in this session. Participants were very interested in the Key for Success and their linkage to IWRM Process and IWRM Spiral. One typial question was ‘Are Keys for Success indicators?’. Our answer was as follows; Key for Success is not an indicator but a key for action, therefore we don't have to do all the Keys for Success in the implementation of IWRM. One Key for Success may be enough to turn the spiral if the key is needed to overcome the challange we are facing to.