Participation of the Chairholder, Dr. Barbara Janusz-Pawletta in:
The 2nd UNESCO Water Security Conference, May 13-14, 2019, Paris, France
On May 14, Dr. Barbara Janusz-Pawletta made a presentation at which she presented the projects and activities of our UNESCO Chair in Water Management in Central Asia. She has put forward a proposal to promote the Summer Aral School as one of the activities of UNESCO in the region.
As a follow up for the discussion there were raised an interest to issue UNESCO GGRETA program support for the seminar for young officials in the climate and water sector in September 2019. The second issue of the discussion was Summer school in the Aral Sea in 2019 which the Chair has proposed to be considered as one of the UNESCO IHP Kazakhstan events in the region.
27th UNESCO International Hydrological Program (UNESCO IHP) Regional Steering Committee Meeting for Asia and the Pacific, 29-31 October, 2019, Naypyidaw, Myanmar
Participation in the 27th meeting of the UNESCO International Hydrological Program Regional Steering Committee Meeting for Asia and the Pacific was important, especially to strengthen the network and expand the contacts of the DKU, in particular the UNESCO Chair on Water Management in Central Asia. This was the first time Kazakhstan was invited to participate in the Regional Steering Committee Meeting for Asia and the Pacific, and I was the first representative as a holder of the UNESCO Chair and a member of the Kazakhstan National Committee of UNESCO International Hydrological Program. The program lasted 3 business days. On the first day, a seminar was held to discuss the new UNESCO International Hydrological Program IHP-2020 Strategic Plan, which presented the situation with disaster risk reduction in Myanmar. The official 27th session of the Regional Steering Committee Meeting for Asia and the Pacific International Hydrological Program took place on the second day, officially opened by the Vice Minister of Agriculture of Myanmar. This included presentations on the activities of national committees from the Asia-Pacific region, including the activities of the UNESCO Chair at DKU. On the third day, a field trip took place, where the nearby water resources and infrastructure were visited.
During the seminar there was a presentation of the UNESCO Water Museum Initiative network. UNESCO Representative in Beijing, Philip Pypaert, has offered various options for water museums around the world. The participants discussed in detail the possibility of discussing the concept of a museum of water resources (a digital eco-museum with components of a digital museum) through the National Committee of International Hydrological Program of Kazakhstan. A related conference on this topic will be held in 2020 in Hangzhou, China, to which the UNESCO Chair holder has received a preliminary invitation. The Chinese side of UNESCO and Chinese partners are interested in expanding the network of initiatives for the Water Museum, and potential cooperation and funding from China to Kazakhstan may arise. We believe that an initiative such as the creation of a Water Museum for Central Asia in Kazakhstan would be a great idea.
The UNESCO African Regional Training Workshop on Effective Water Quality Management and Emerging Pollutants in Water and Wastewater, 25 to 27 September 2018, Accra, Ghana
The training workshop was organized collaboratively by the UNESCO-IHP International Initiative on Water Quality (IIWQ), UNESCO Offices in Abuja and Accra and the Regional Centre on Integrated River Basin Management (RC-IRBM), under the auspices of UNESCO. It was organized in the framework of the UNESCO-IHP International Initiative on Water Quality (IIWQ) flagship Project on ―Emerging Pollutants in Wastewater Reuse in Developing Countries‖.
The main objective of the training workshop is to build capacity for effective water quality management for the SDGs implementation. The 1st day sessions mainly covered the topic of Water quality and monitoring of emerging pollutants, and the 2nd day was focused more on the risk assessment of and approaches to managing emerging pollutants in water and wastewater. During the 3rd day of the training, Mr. Philipp Theuring presented the UNESCO Chair on Water Management in Central Asia, covering the activities of the UNESCO Chair at DKU, the DKU IWRM Master program, emphasizing the field campaigns of the IWRM Master students directed at studying of the water quality and emerging pollutants in Central Asia. Mr. Philipp Theuring also had a discussion with Dr. O.O.Yaya on how to continue the cooperation between UNESCO Chair in Water on Water Resources and RC-IRBM, where the ground for further cooperation would be IWRM and capacity development.