UfM Water Governance and Financing project holds national consultation workshops in Jordan and Tunisia

The UfM-labelled project ‘Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector’ will initiate a national policy dialogue in Jordan during a first consultation workshop on 23 October in Amman.

Officially launched in May 2013, this regional project is jointly implemented by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Global Water Partnership-Mediterranean (GWP-Med). Its core objective is to diagnose key governance bottlenecks to mobilising financing through public private partnerships (PPP) for the Mediterranean water sector and to support the development of consensual action plans based on international good practices.

The First National Consultation Workshop in Jordan will bring together key actors from within and outside the country’s water and wastewater sector to discuss governance issues relating to public-private partnerships (PPPs) on water. The Dialogue will help build a shared consensus on the main obstacles to private sector involvement in Jordan’s water sector and identify concrete actions to overcome them supported by experience, tools, and practices found successful elsewhere in and beyond the region.

 The consultation workshop will be held back-to-back with a meeting of key donors active in Jordan’s water sector that will take stock of completed, on-going and planned projects so as to avoid duplication of efforts, identify potential synergies and better streamline the governance and financing analysis of the project with donor initiatives on the ground. 

Similar to the work in Jordan, the First National Consultation Workshop in Tunisia was held in Tunis on 1 October bringing together in a constructive policy dialogue more than 60 participants representing different stakeholders, including national authorities, policy and decision makers, users, international organisations and donors, and research institutes and universities. Participants particularly highlighted the need to address the declining performance of the water sector and to reflect strategically on the potential opportunities and roles of private sector participation in the specific context of Tunisia. 
Follow up multi-stakeholder workshops in the framework of the respective national policy dialogues in Jordan and Tunisia are scheduled for the first quarter of 2014. 

Read more:
Press release

•  Governance & Financing for the Mediterranean Water Sector project factsheet and web page
•  UfM – Environment & Water