27 November 2014
Central American Legislators to Strengthen IWRM
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The Global Water Partnership Central America (GWP-CA) and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador organized the 8th Legislators Conference on Water Resources.

The meeting addressed issues including: food security, risk management and energy; experiences with water, climate change and development; institutional reform for integrated water resources management (IWRM); and where countries are in the process of adopting or implementing national water laws.

GWP Global logotype17 November 2014: The Global Water Partnership Central America (GWP-CA) and the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador organized the 8th Legislators Conference on Water Resources. The meeting addressed issues including: food security, risk management and energy; experiences with water, climate change and development; institutional reform for integrated water resources management (IWRM); and where countries are in the process of adopting or implementing national water laws.

The meeting, which took place on 28 October 2014, in San Salvador, El Salvador, brought together over 20 legislators from Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama, as well as experts from the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Central American Agricultural Council (CAC), the Latin American Energy Organization (OLADE) and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

The meeting adopted the ‘Declaration of San Salvador’ in which participants commit to, inter alia: make every effort to approve water laws, where none exist, or legal policies, to strengthen IWRM as a mechanism to promote sustainable water use; raise awareness with other legislators on the leading role of water for the development of countries; promote the inclusion of IWRM and climate change adaptation into policies that are approved; and make every effort to legislate so as to ensure access to safe drinking water and declare water as a public good.

In the declaration, the legislators further underline that: IWRM provides an appropriate framework for action to promote sustainable use of water resources at the national and regional levels; and that effective basin management represents an element of regional peace and constitutes one of the main elements of Central American integration. [GWP Press Release] [Conference Website]

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