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United Nations University,
International Network on Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH)

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Phone: 1-905-667-5511
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Email: contact@inweh.unu.edu

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Lake Twinning

Regional Dialogue and Twinning to Improve Transboundary Water Resources Governance in Africa

 

Water management needs in the Great Lakes region of Africa are acute, with inadequate institutions, policies and implementation capacity for effective watershed management. As part of a larger GEF project “Regional Dialogue to Improve Transboundary Water Resources Governance in Africa”, UNU-INWEH is undertaking a comparative study of management approaches by lake commissions in the African Great Lakes and Laurentian Great Lakes in North America.

This “Lake Twinning” project involves five lake commissions with similar mandates and a potential wealth of common interests, challenges and experiences, namely:

  • The International Joint Commission (IJC), as an independent advisor to prevent or resolve disputes between USA and Canada under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty.

  • The Great Lakes Fishery Commission (GLFC), established by Canada and USA in 1955.

  • The Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization (LVFO), established formed in 1994 by the three riparian states of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

  • The Lake Victoria Basin Commission (LVBC), formed by The East African Community Council of Ministers in July 2005.

  • The Lake Tanganyika Authority (LTA), formally launched in December 2008 by four countries: the Republic of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), the United Republic of Tanzania and the Republic of Zambia

The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), and implemented in partnership with the lake commissions listed above.

 

OBJECTIVES:


The Lake Twinning project aims to:

  • Facilitate policy, legal and institutional reform for transboundary waters management (quantity and quality) through comparative analysis

  • Enhance regional and national knowledge and capacity for the management and planning of shared water resource systems

  • Strengthen planning processes in shared water resources management, facilitating self-sustaining regional water institutions in Africa.

 

We anticipate that this project will lead to the development of a framework for collaboration on great lakes systems through enhanced science and policy linkages and that this framework will form the basis for longer term partnership between the commissions.

 

ACTIVITIES:

 

The first policy workshop was held in Entebbe in September 2008.

 

The Second policy workshop was held at Niagara Falls on June 14 and 15, 2009.

This International Symposium shall provide a forum to develop a framework that will focus on comparative analysis and improvement of governance and management capacity and also form a basis for development of a general framework for trans-boundary lake basin management. For Agenda, click here.

 

UNU-INWEH in partnership with IJC and UNESCO Center for Water Law, Policy and Science is organizing a seminar "100 Years, Shared Lake Basins, Lessons Learned" on August 20, 2009 at the World Water Week in Stockholm to share the results of the two workshops and also to share lessons learned in transboundary lake management.This session would try to bring in North America and East African professional communities along with other professionals working on transboundary issues and will explore the lessons learned from over a 100 years of managing shared transboundary lakes.  It will offer a platform to promote communication and network between key players including policymakers, decision makers and scientists; to share experiences in institutional designs and public processes, bridging science and policy gap and to share common and emerging research-policy threads in the field of
transboundary lake management

 

Date: August 20, 2009

Time: 14:00 - 17:30

Venue: K21

Agenda: Click here for PDF version or html version

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Last updated: 31 July 2009