[WLRC April 2024]: WLRC conducted the Board of Trustees (BoT) Annual Meeting on April 4, 2024 in Haile Resort, Arba Minch, Ethiopia. The agenda items were: 1) approval of the previous year (2021/22) BoT Meeting minutes; 2) approval of the 2022/23 Annual Report and 2023/24 Annual Plan; 3) approval of the 2022/23 Audit Report; and 4) emerging institutional issues of the Centre.
The Meeting approved the Minutes of the Board’s previous year Meeting and then the Co-chairman of their BoT Professor Thomas Breu of CDE, University of Bern, invited the Director General of WLRC and Member Secretary of the BoT Dr. Gete Zeleke to present the Centre’s July 2022 – June 2023 Annual Report and July 2023 – July 2024 Annual Plan. The BoT deliberated on the overall situation of the Center, the achievements of the center, and challenges faced were delivered in the presentation. Besides, the annual report and plan, the new grant projects secured in the fiscal year were introduced for the members of the Board of Trustees.
The members of the BoT acknowledged the successful exemplary accomplishments of WLRC regardless of challenges that affected the conduct of field works. The members of BoT commended WLRC to scale out the impressive achievements and lessons in water, land, climate and. livelihoods improvement. At that juncture, the BoT members also raised concerns regarding strategies and approaches WLRC will employ to implement new projects like ‘Basin Management Support for Resilient Inclusive Growth and Harmonized Transformation for the National Integrated Water Resource Management programme of Ethiopia (BRIGHT)’ Project that have wide area coverage at such unstable environment. Finally, the Annual Report for the previous year and the Annual Plan for the ongoing year were approved by the BoT. Important decisions were also made regarding the frequency of the BoT’s Meeting and WLRC’s institutional matters.
The BoT of WLRC is composed of State Minister of the Ministry of Water Resources, Director from Ministry of Finance; Deputy Director of Ethiopian Environment Protection Authority; Addis Ababa University Vice President for Research and Technology Transfer; a Senior Scientist from Addis Ababa University; Director of Centre for Environment and Development (CDE) of the University of Bern, Switzerland; and the Director General of Water and Land Resource Centre.
At the end of the meeting, the members of the BOT visited the 40 springs at Nech Sar National Park.