[WLRC June 2024]: Water and Land Resource Centre (WLRC) conducted a Basin Management Support for Resilient Inclusive Growth and Harmonized Transformation for the national IWRM (BRIGHT) Project second round stakeholder consultation workshop on July 1-3, 2024 at Haile Grand Hotel, Addis Ababa. The workshop aimed to review progress with the BRIGHT project’s inception activities and collect inputs from stakeholders.
During the opening speech, the Director General of WLRC, Dr. Gete Zeleke, reiterated the inception activities carried out by WLRC since the launch of the project. He emphasized the importance of baseline studies for making informed decisions in line with the project’s work packages. Dr. Gete explained that different teams from WLRC had been involved in assessing baseline data in the five basins, covering areas such as institutional analysis and institutional capacity gaps assessment, biophysical, and socioeconomic situations assessment. The reports produced were prepared by the different teams were presented in the consultation workshop to gather inputs from stakeholders’ assessments and experiences.
Stakeholders worked together to refine criteria for selecting hotspot sub-basins for watershed management applications and proposed watersheds from Abbay, Awash, Tekeze, Rift Valley and Omo-Gibe Basins.
The participants were about 105 professionals drawn from the Ministry of Water, Irrigation, and Energy (MoWE), regional bureaus, Basin Administration bureaus, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and other IWRM projects (BASRNET) members attended the workshop. The event was productive in gathering feedback and inputs on the baseline studies, with stakeholders actively engaged and forwarding their opinions to aid in the actual implementation of the project.