Global Water Partnership – Mediterranean is organizing with the Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development (MIO/ECSDE) a series of targeted Capacity Building Workshops that focus on experiences and methodologies for addressing specific issues of transboundary water resources management. They are expected to leverage the varying levels of practical knowledge in the area, facilitating the cross-fertilization between stakeholders of the different shared basins as well as introduce knowledge and experience from outside the region.

The Capacity Building Workshops are supported by the European Commission (through the Annual Funding of MIO/ECSDE), the German Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, GEF IW:LEARN, UNESCO BRESCE and UNEP/MAP.

The aim is to enhance the practical capacity of stakeholders on specific issues of integrated management of the shared water bodies, hence assisting in the advancing of TWRM in the geographical areas that the project will focus on.

Four workshops will be organized until the end of 2008 (two more are planned for 2009) in the framework of the Petersberg Phase II / Athens Declaration Process and GEF IW:LEARN.

The workshops work in synergy with the GEF IW projects in the area i.e. “Integrated Ecosystem Management in the Prespa Lakes Basin of Albania, FYR Macedonia and Greece” and “Integrated management of Skadar Lake ecosystem”.

Moreover they work in synergy and support the implementation of the GEF Strategic Partnership for the Mediterranean Large Marine Ecosystems as well as the Mediterranean Component of the EU Water Initiative (MED EUWI).

The series of capacity building workshops are geographically focusing primarily:

1. on the hydrographical network of the Southwestern Balkan Peninsula that includes the Prespa, Ohrid and Shkoder Lakes and Drin River basins.
2. on the Sava River Basin.

Capacity Building Workshops organized until now:

• "Stakeholder involvement in Transboundary Water Resources Management",
  Podgorica, Montenegro, 25-27 March 2008
• "Integrated Management of Shared Lakes Basins"
  16-18 July, Ohrid, FYR Macedonia