G-WADI organizes Training Workshop on Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Zones

On the initiative of UNESCO’s Tehran Office and IHP Iran, the Regional G-WADI Training Workshop on Climate Change Impacts on Water Resources Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Zones was held in Tehran, Iran from 20 to 21 June 2011 with the presence of Chair of IHP Intergovernmental Council, Prof Soontak Lee; Chairman of the Iranian National IHP Committee and Deputy Minister of Water and Waste Water Affairs, Ministry of Energy, I.R. of Iran, Mr Attarzade; Secretary General of the Iranian National Commission for UNESCO, Dr Saeidabadi; Deputy Minister of Jihad Agriculture, Dr Salajaghe; Director of UNESCO Tehran Cluster Office, Mr. Qunli Han; members of the Iranian National IHP Committee and representatives from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. The Workshop covered the following themes:

20 June

• Opening Ceremony
• Session 1: Monitoring and Modeling Climate Change

21 June

• Session 2: Impacts of Climate Change: dealing with uncertainty)
• Session 3: Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change
• Session 4: Introducing International Initiatives and Activities of UNESCO in Iran

The Workshop was followed by the 4th Meeting of the Asian G-WADI Network attended by representatives from Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, the Chairman of IHP Intergovernmental Council, Prof Lee, members of the Iranian National IHP Committee, UNESCO staff from Almaty and Tehran Offices as well as representatives from Iranian Universities who met in Tehran, Iran, on 22nd June 2011. Officially opened by Prof Lee, the Chair of IHP Intergovernmental Council, the new directions of the G-WADI Programme as well as report of Asian G-WADI activities were reviewed. Very interesting discussions took place around the country reports presented by participating countries, which further underlined the need to improve networking and capacity building activities. The countries welcomed Iran’s initiative to develop concrete project proposals for joint collaboration of two or more of Asian G-WADI countries. In this respect, two project proposals were presented by IHP Iran for which the countries agreed to further review the proposal on "Creation of Landform, Land use, Land cover and Soil erosion maps using a GIS and Remote Sensing Protocol at the regional scale" and provide feedbacks. The participating countries also concluded to develop a publication under IHP series on "Lessons learnt from Integrated Watershed Management in the Asian G-WADI Countries". They also stressed on the need to exchange technical visits among the Asian G-WADI Pilot Basins. The meeting was closed by adopting an unanimous statement.

On 23 June, participants had a technical visit to Taleghan-Hashtgerd G-WADI Pilot Basin as a Post-Workshop Technical Tour.