On the occasion of the Wilson Center's 50th anniversary, its Environmental Change and Security Program and nine co-sponsoring programs convened experts on November 28 from government, the NGO sector, and academia for a comprehensive look at the first year of the U.S. Government Global Water Strategy and new research and practice on water, peace, and conflict.
James Callegary is a hydrologist with the USGS and holds a doctorate in Soil and Water Science from the University of Arizona. He will be discussing lessons learned from his 15 years working along the US-Mexico border with special emphasis on the Transboundary Aquifer Assessment Program. James also conducts research on groundwater-surface-water interactions, watershed restoration, and carbon sequestration. Register and learn more using the button below:
The Sustainable Water Partnership held this webinar on August 15, 2019 to learn about the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) efforts to better understand and manage transboundary water sources.
Presenters
According to the United Nations (UN), transboundary waters—the aquifers and lake and river basins shared by two or more countries—account for an estimated 60 percent of global freshwater flow and are home to more than 40 percent of the world’s population. Depleted and degraded transboundary water supplies have the potential to cause social unrest and spark conflict among countries.
The world’s 286 transboundary river basins support the socioeconomic well-being of more than 40 percent of its population, as well as the ecosystems on which they depend. The use of shared water resources by one country will, in most cases, impact other countries sharing the same system. Coordination among countries in the development of transboundary basins can reap greater mutual benefits than would otherwise be available to countries pursuing individual development.
In the last decades, the awareness on the reasons why gender should be particularly mainstreamed in the water realm rapidly grew. Investing in gender mainstreaming in water programs is fundamental and now well justified, because it represents a step forward towards the realization of the SDGs and of the 2030 agenda. This is particularly true and even more challenging in the case of transboundary water bodies, which require cooperation and collaboration among the various authorities in charge of waters across the national borders, based on mutual trust and on transparency.
The U.S. Government Global Water Strategy sets water security as its overarching goal. The strategy envisions a water-secure world, where people and nations have the water they need to be healthy, prosperous, and resilient. Achieving water security requires understanding how complicated and interconnected social, environmental, political, and economic factors shape access to safe drinking water and sustainable management of water resources.
Sustainable and Thriving Environments for West Africa Regional Development (STEWARD III) is a forest conservation and sustainable livelihoods project implemented by the U.S. Forest Service’s International Program (USFS-IP). It works in transboundary priority zones in the Upper Guinean Forest ecosystem, occurring in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire. It is the third iteration of the STEWARD program.
Southern Africa has significant biodiversity and natural resources, as well as a robust legal framework for natural resource management across borders. However, most countries in the region are water scarce or water stressed. National policies lack harmonization across countries and between sectors, and poor and vulnerable populations lack enough benefits and incentives for sustainable resource management.
This document is part of a series of studies produced by the African and Latin American Resilience to Climate Change (ARCC) project that addresses adaptation to climate change in West Africa. Within the ARCC West Africa studies, this document falls in the subseries Climate Change and Water Resources in West Africa. ARCC undertook the West Africa water studies to increase understanding of the potential impacts of climate change on water resources in West Africa and identify means to support adaptation to these changes.
