Wednesday 1^st of November the Climate change, migration & me Challenge has been finalized as part of the Young Water Professional program of the Amsterdam International Water Week. Five teams have researched 5 different cases (go here to find the case-descriptions and -owners) and presented their results to a jury consisting of:

• Jan Busstra – Head of Unit Marine and International Water Policy – Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management
• Marcel Beukeboom – Climate Envoy of the Netherlands
• Louise van Schaik – Head Clingendael Sustainability & Senior Research Fellow – Clingendael Institute

All the participants of the Challenge Climate Change, Migration & Me

Their research resulted into two different outputs; a research poster and a short video. The results can be found here.

We would sincerely like to thank all participants, case-owners and jury for making this Challenge a huge success! Furthermore, we again congratulate the winning groups (described below), and are very curious to hear about their experiences during COP23 in Bonn and the Planetary Security Conference in The Hague.

The winners of the challenge are: Karin Bremer, Leslie Ford, Maya Velis and Marieke Hagg from the Case: Zika In Paradise: Climate Change, Migration, and Disease. They are able to go to the COP23: the 23rd Conference of the Parties on Climate Change from 9 until 11 November 2017 in Bonn, Germany. The case was offered by Tatiana Acevedo Guerrero, lecturer and researcher in the Politics of Sanitation and Wastewater Governance at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education, and Leslie Ford, a MSc candidate in Water Services Management.

The group that will go to COP23!

 The second price is for Elisa Perpignan, Derrick Agyapong, Rollis Jiofack, Oluwasegun Seriki (participating online out of respectively Ghana, Burkina Faso and Ireland),  from the case: European Pact for Water. They are able to go to the Planetary Security Conference – 12 and 13 December, 2017 – The Hague, the Netherlands. The case was offered by the European Pact for Water & Women for Water Partnership by Lesha Witmer and Annemiek Jenniskens.

The group that won an entrance to the Planetary Security Conference!

During the final presentation, we have launched an escape room that has been built on behalf of the Netherlands IHP-HWRP Committee by Popup Escape, to initiate awareness and discussion on the relation between Climate Change, Migration and your own involvement. This escape room will pop-up during several events in the coming year, where the scientific posters that are a result of this Challenge will give background and information to the players.

Will you be able to solve the puzzles in 20 minutes?

Are you also interested in placing the escape room during your event? Please let us know by emailing to ihp.hwrp@unesco.nl

We are working on a magazine that will disseminate all the results of this challenge, and more.

Currently the Netherlands counts 45 UNESCO schools. UNESCO schools are part of UNESCO Associated Schools Project Network (ASPnet). The schools range from primary education to Universities and pay attention to four UNESCO themes. These themes are used worldwide:

• Peace and human rights
• Intercultural learning
• World citizenship
• Durability

On October 5th, Dutch UNESCO schools gathered together in The Hague to connect and get inspired. Teachers, student groups, and potential UNESCO schools had the opportunity to talk to each other and exchange information to develop ideas for their own school curricula. This day we – the secretariat of the Netherlands IHP-HWRP committee – were able to give a workshop completely related to water. The workshop highlighted three great water initiatives:

• Hugo Groeneveld from Kring Vrienden, ‘S-Hertogenbosch, gave a presentation about their work in Den Bosch and about their interest for the Global Network of Water Museums. The Global Network of Water Museums is an initiative from the water museum in Venice, who with the support of IHP Italy aim to create a network among Water Museums around the globe. Kring Vrienden of ‘S-Hertogenbosch are designing a water museum and plan to contribute to the Global Network of Water Museums. The UNESCO schools have been invited to ‘S-Hertogenbosch for an interesting excursion on our Dutch water-related history!
• Paul van Essen went into discussion with the teachers about how we can value water and how valuing water could be introduced in the school curricula. This in order to see how youth perceives the value of water. Valuing water is an initiative from the High Level Panel on Water who mainly focus on the implementation of sustainable development goal 6, to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
• Lyvia represented TAHMO (The Trans-African Hydro Meteorological Observatory) who aim to develop a vast network of weather stations across Africa. Current and historic weather data is important for agricultural and climate monitoring. TAHMO created two educational programs – School2School and University2University – which are initiatives that involve schools in actual research and are meant to increase international school partnerships. UNESCO schools could join one of the 2 initiatives and get a partner school in Africa or even go on exchange.

We hope we have inspired schools to include water related topics into their curricula in a creative manner!

For the coming half year, we are happy to welcome Lyvia van der Jagt, who started an internship at the Netherlands IHP-HWRP Committee Secretariat.

Herewith, she would like to introduce herself:

Hi, my name is Lyvia van der Jagt, I am a Coastal Zone Management student from Van Hall Larenstein, University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden. For the coming 5 months, I will work with the Netherlands National IHP-HWRP Committee as part of my final internship. I am excited and eager to learn more about the Committee, IHE-Delft company, and all the projects that come into play. I will especially focus on the main theme of the Committee this year, which is the Challenge ‘Climate Change, Migration, and Me’.

During my study, I have worked on coral conservation and restoration in Thailand and followed a minor in Sustainable Island Management. The combination of these two projects led to my final thesis, which was focused on how to increase support, involvement, and participation with the Caribbean Netherlands Science Institute among the local community on St. Eustatius. Working for the Netherlands National IHP-HWRP Committee is the final step in my journey to become a graduated Coastal Zone Manager.

You can contact her at: l.vanderjagt@un-ihe.org

The Netherlands IHP-HWRP Committee has joined forces with the Water Youth Network (WYN), the World Youth Parliament for Water (WYPW), and the Young AIWW (YWP Amsterdam International Water Week), to create the above animation and show why it is especially important for young people to give input to the #valuingwater process.

Your input and action

As young person, your thoughts and actions on #valuingwater are highly valued! You are invited by 11 heads of state to comment on draft principles on Valuing Water. We also know that actions speak louder than words. The consultation provides space to showcase the  actions you might already undertake, or great plans you have, that link to valuing water. Share them via the consultation with the High Level Panel for Water! Read more about the initiative below, and check the film for more information!

Visit this website, and click the tab ‘consultation’ to provide your input:

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/HLPWater

Water and the UN

Water is high on the agenda at the United Nations. To support a ‘comprehensive, inclusive and collaborative way of developing and managing water resources, and improving water and sanitation related services’, the Secretary General has invited 11 Heads of State and Government and one Special Adviser to champion a comprehensive, inclusive and collaborative way of developing and managing water resources, and improving water and sanitation related services.

Value water and the High Level Panel on Water

This High Level Panel on Water (HLPW) focuses first and foremost on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 6 to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all, but also on the achievement of the other SDGs that rely on the development and management of water resources.

One of the HLPW’s key cross cutting projects is on Valuing Water. This project aims to contribute to “a global consensus and common language to guide better approaches to valuing water across three critical dimensions – social and cultural, environmental and economic”. To support a common language and development of joint action, the HLPW provided the Bellagio Principles on Valuing Water.

The coordinators of the Americas Regional Process and its sub-regional processes, the IDB, UNESCO PHI-LAC, GWP, IICA and ANEAS invite you to participate:

Some of you might have noticed that we have just launched a Challenge with the main theme of the Netherlands IHP-HWRP Committee for this year:

Climate Change and its relation with Migration

For the Challenge you can find an animation video and more information and in the event lits and on our Facebook page you can see the dates and locations.

We are very curious what Popup-escape will make out of this!

We are happy to introduce to you the new governmental co-chair of the Netherlands IHP-HWRP Committee; Jan Busstra. He will represent the policy fields in the committee, while the current scientific co-chair – Prof. Pieter van der Zaag – will continue representing the research fields. We believe that such a co-chair construction will enable them to create linkages between science, policy and practice, to connect the various parties in the Committee, and have a higher national and international leverage.

Jan is the head of the International Water and Marine Division of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment, he is working in watermanagement for the past 8 years. In these years he was initially engaged in national and european policies related to water quality and water quantity. He is currently also acting as Marine Director to the European Union. Furthermore, he is within the Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment responsible for the activities related to the international water ambition also including implementation of the waterrelated SDG’s and bilateral cooperation with the so-called Delta-countries.

We hereby welcome him as co-chair and member of the Committee.

This study, titled ‘The snow and glacier melt components of streamflow of the river Rhine and its tributaries considering the influence of climate change’ was done under the auspices of the International Commission for the Hydrology of the Rhine Basin (CHR), by two universities and an engineering company in Germany and Switzerland.

The CHR is an organization in which the scientific institutes of the Rhine riparian states develop joint hydrological measures for sustainable development of the Rhine basin. The CHR was founded in 1970 following advice by UNESCO to promote closer co-operation in international river basins. Since 1975, the work has been continued within the framework of the International Hydrological Programme (IHP) of the UNESCO and the Operational Hydrological Programme (OHP) of the WMO. The member states of the CHR are: Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

Quantified daily fractions  of the rain, snowmelt, and glaciers ice melt components of streamflow from 1901-2006 of the entire Rhine basin are available in the report. The contemplation over a period of several years creates more knowledge on trends and changes that are caused by climate variability, and the disappearance of glaciers and the increase of the reservoir volume in the Alps. Discovered was that the daily run-off values give a good insight into the amount of water that is added by the melted snow and ice to the extreme low discharges.

In a follow-up of this project they will look into trends of discharge components for the coming decennia, with the help of climate scenarios.

Pleased to present the first newsletter for 2017. It discusses the following topics:

1. UNESCO-IHP updates
2. Stocktacking the focus theme for 2017
   1. 8th WWF
   2. Reviewing Dutch Scientific Hydrology
3. Amsterdam International Water Week
4. Water SDGs
5. UNESCO schools & the Sandwatch project
6. OECD water related activities
7. WWDR
8. Agricultural Watermanagement Community
9. CHy-15
10. Agenda
11. A UNESCO Water Chair position

The global implementation of SDG 6 monitoring will be multi-phased and initially focusses on establishing a global baseline for the 11 global indicators under SDG 6. For the first phase in 2017, UN-Water has invited approximately 50 countries to participate, to be followed by further phases to reach global coverage.

It is foreseen that this first set of countries would produce baseline data by September 2017. The baseline data will feed into the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018 and the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development’s in-depth review of SDG 6 in 2018.

Countries have been invited to the process via an official letter from UN-Water to their Permanent Missions in Geneva, and the process to September 2017 (and beyond) can be found here.

Of course, in order to start collecting the baseline data, the methodologies for measuring the SDG6 indicators have been revised, and are now finished and available here.

The inception webinars have started last week, and were joined by Kees Baas (Statistical Bureau of the Netherlands) and Ronald van Dokkum (Rijkswaterstaat, coordinator for the monitoring of SDG6 in the Netherlands).