We had valuable discussions through the sessions at the 6th NARBO General Meeting which was held in Jakarta from 22 to 24 February, 2017. NARBO secretariat consulted on the draft summary named ´Voice of Asian Water Management Practitioners (VoA)´ to all NARBO member organizations after initial consultation with the Steering Committee Members of NARBO.
Based on some recommendations of NARBO members, we finalized VoA and shared it at the meeting of the OECD Water Governance Initiative. It was well welcomed by the OECD as a pragmatic document to implement OECD Principles on Water Governance and achieve targets of SDGs.
NARBO secretariat is disseminating ´VoA´ at international meetings as a NARBO's policy paper to increase our influence and promote improvements of water issues in the region. ´VoA´ is a living document, and it will be upgraded after the regional discussions.
NARBO secretariat is preparing the sequel IWRM guidelines of which theme is "Appropriate and Applicable Approach (3A)" which was stated in ´VoA´. These guidelines will introduce the model cases of well adopted technologies, methods and systems to river basins that are managed by organizations concerned on water management as well as NARBO member organizations. Those will also be useful for expanding RBO staff's knowledge and skill and help RBOs manage respective river basins better. We are therefore calling upon all NARBO member organizations to consider offering case studies of Appropriate and Applicable Approaches for the guidelines. Selected case studies will be included in the guidelines and shared through the 3rd Asia Pacific Water Summit (APWS) to be held in December 2017.
The request letter asking for cooperation by offering case studies of NARBO member organizations has already been sent to the contact persons of NARBO. NARBO secretariat looks forward to receiving valuable case studies from member organizations. At the same time, if you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know.
NARBO secretariats with colleagues of PJT1 and PJT2 joined the 9th OECD Water Governance Initiative meeting which was held in Paris from 3 to 4 July, 2017. The 9th meeting aimed to discuss the Water Governance indicator which was developed along with the OECD Principles on Water Governance to be introduced at the 8th World Water Forum as "OECD Water Governance at a glance" and its supported case studies. Approximately 100 delegates from member organization joined this meeting. NARBO stressed the necessity of diversity in water governance by introducing the formulation of water governance in Asia and announced the 3rd Asia-Pacific Water Summit (3APWS) which would be held from 11 to 12 December, 2017 in Yangon, Myanmar. NARBO’s input was well received among the participants of the meeting, and some concrete discussions for the summit and the 8th World Water Forum with NARBO and participant organizations were made.
Regarding OECD Water Governance Initiative, Selangore Water Management Authority, Malaysia was selected as one of the pilot-testing organization of OECD's Water Governance Indicator to hold the stakeholder consultation workshop based on OECD's guidelines. The result of the consultation workshop contributed to improve the accuracy of the indicator. The 2nd round of the consultation workshop will be held in upcoming September. Furthermore, we've collected the 6 case studies to support the indicator from NARBO member organizations, and they will be introduced at the OECD's publication which will be launched at the 8th World Water Forum (8WWF).
On 5 July, NARBO and secretariat of OECD WGI held the discussion aiming to direct input Asian Water Governance to OECD. Mr. Didik Ardianto, PJT1 and Mr. Herry Rachmadyanto, PJT2 joined the discussion as NARBO team members and introduced Asian Water Governance by introducing the role of RBO in Indonesia. Mr. Ardianto explained PJT1's achievements by referring OECD's Principles and Water Integrity. Mr. Rachmadyanto introduced PJT2's experiences and shared lessons leant. Our inputs were well-received by OECD and contributed to the increase of the understanding and interests to Asia. Especially, we stressed the importance of integrity and stakeholder participation as key messages from practitioners. NARBO secretariat explained the background and purpose of ´Voice of Asian Water Management Practitioners´ to OECD. OECD well received NARBO's explanation and proposed the possibility of country program and policy dialogue with OECD and peer-review on Water Governance as a next step.
OECD is a lead organization of the water governance as one of the cross-cutting themes of the thematic process on 8WWF. NARBO is the lead organization on the governance with GWP in Asia-Pacific region and on regional process discussion on 8 WWF. Collaborative actions with NARBO and OECD are explored to make synergy and coherent discussion on water governance.
NARBO Newsletter aims to be a tool for sharing good practices, lessons learned from practice and IWRM-related activities, etc. Therefore, we highly welcome articles from you, about good practices, lessons from practice, activities relevant to IWRM. In addition, the article such as topic providing, and fresh voice, etc is also very welcomed. The articles you will contribute to NARBO Secretariat will be put in newsletters to share experience and lessons and so on.
Network of Asian River Basin Organizations