I was very happy to participate in the UNFCCC technical workshop on water and climate change on 18-20 July 2012. The workshop resulted from the lobbying work myself and my colleagues carried out at COP16 in Cancun when FAN worked with the Water and Climate Coalition to get water included in the climate change agenda.

For the first time and as a result also of the work done by the Regional Dialogue on Water and Adaptation in Latin America and the Caribbean, which was lead by CONAGUA and in which FANMex participated, the UNFCCC held a technical workshop on water and climate change impacts and adaptation strategies under the Nairobi work programme on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change, in Mexico city with the support of the CONAGUA.

We are here not to learn about the reasons why water is important when we negotiate about climate change, but we are here to analyse how is the best way to include water into the negotiations

The workshop featured a lot of very interesting presentations, most of them demonstrating the intrinsic linkages between water and climate change adaptation issues. You can see all the presentations on the UNFCCC website

Nevertheless, it was only at the end of the first day that the representative of AMCOW, the African Ministers' Council on Water, made apparent the real objective of this meeting: "we are here not to learn about the reasons why water is important when we negotiate about climate change, but we are here to analyse how is the best way to include water into the negotiations."

The presentations focused on the tools that different organisations have, trying to assess what we can gather in order to coordinate and help the Nairobi work program. These discussions were approached by looking at different levels: micro, national and macro level.

It is from the micro level session that I would like to share some of the discussion. Because of the broad spectrum of the micro level (household, community, local and subnational), a wide variety of examples were presented with various scales of implementation. Despite this, synergies in scale and scope were identified. It was recognised that most adaptation takes place at the local level and all examples emphasized the importance of water as an integrating element.

Another aspect that was discussed included the paradigm of community vs ecosystem or ecosystem and community: Ecosystem-based as well as community-based solutions were raised as different starting points but the presenters of both approaches stressed the importance of inclusion of elements of the other approach. The various cases emphasized the need to include particular groups and the synergies with those groups, such as local, indigenous, and woman’s bodies of knowledge depending on the setting. There was also a particular emphasis to foster trans-boundary and trans-institutional knowledge sharing, information exchange and cooperation to actually tackle adaptation and water issues.

Finally the workshop broke into groups to discuss different types of adaptation planning and practices related to water resources at different levels. I participated in the subnational and community level in order to share what FAN does to linking the local to global. FAN through its regional members was presented as a good example of bringing up local practices into different levels of decision makers. 

FAN fellows I am happy to share that our work is giving some results in the integration of water into the Nairobi workprogram and our bottom up approach and messages is need it.