Why?

A specific Regional preparatory process was of great importance for the success of the Forum since water issues differ from region to region, and all issues of the Forum’s thematic framework did not bear the same importance for all regions. Even if the challenges are comparable in many regions, the solutions to these challenges need to be defined locally: water is and will remain a local issue, and the regional processes contribute to mobilizing and committing worldwide action for water.

Objectives

The aim of the regional process was to mobilize actors in the region and act as a catalyser for specific contributions from the region to the Forum; to contribute to the thematic process by providing mainly their perspectives on the regional views of the issues and on priority action required and to contribute to the political process by organising the political mobilisation in the region and providing inputs into the political processes of the Forum.

Implementation

For each region, “Regional Coordinators” have been approached based on their capacity, willingness, representativity and preparedness. A preliminary list of coordinators is given below.

Who coordinated the regional processes?

Please click on the names of the regions below to see a short summary of the progress in that region. Clicking on the names of the regional coordinators will take you to their institutional websites. Details of who was who in the regional processes are available in the VMS.

Interaction with other processes

Although homogeneity was not necessarily required, similar outputs and contributions to the Forum were desirable from the regional process and these initiatives were linked to the other Forum processes in a structured way. The regional processes therefore based their work on the Forum programme framework that was developed by the Programme Committee and which specified the aim, issues, themes and topics for the Forum.

The Regional Process was intricately linked to and drives the political process, feeding policy recommendations from a region perspective as substance to the discussions within and between political groups. Other major ongoing processes at a regional level also provided input to the 5th Forum political process. Major water summits were convened around the world whose policy-oriented output was also used in the formulation of the political process outputs. Some of the important water summits (e.g. the Asia-Pacific Water Summit, African Water Summit, European Water Summit, Forum of the Americas) involving key political actors of the regions were linked and fed into the political processes. Where the political process was organised around “PrepCom” meetings, the regions were also invited to represent their organization.

Africa

Americas

Asia-Pacific

Europe

In/around Turkey: Turkey - Jordan- Sarajevo - Skopje - Bishkek

Mediterranean

MENA/Arab countries

CMS

Information on the regional process