Supporting water utilities in the Pacific and South-East Asia to respond to COVID-19
As Australia is working on recovering and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are cognisant that many countries still face public health challenges around accessing safe and clean water which are essential requirements for preventing viral spread and infection. As many countries are now transitioning to economic recovery, support for water utilities is needed to […]
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Launching an Australian Telewater Network for international development
Since early March, when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, the Australian Water Partnership (AWP) has been identifying and developing a series of responses to assist the Australian Government to support developing countries prepare, respond and recover from COVID-19. One such response was to establish a platform to deploy Australian […]
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Assessing COVID-19 vulnerability and water sector interventions in the Indo-Pacific
The COVID-19 pandemic has been particularly challenging in developing parts of Asia where high population densities, combined with low infrastructure capacity, make social distancing interventions near impossible. These areas usually have inadequate health services—ill-equipped to handle the likely increase in patients. Similarly, in the Pacific, most countries have limited medical resources to manage the global […]
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COVID-19 and Water Resources Management: Reframing our priorities as a water sector
By Marian J. Neal The water sector has an important role to play in our immediate response to COVID-19 as well as in the recovery and rebuilding phases as the world readjusts to a range of legacy impacts from the pandemic. This role spans and incorporates the breadth and depth of the various domains and […]
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Empowering village communities for a sustainable water future: $1B project launched to improve groundwater management in India
The Government of India’s National Groundwater Management Improvement Program, known as Atal Bhujal Yojana (ATAL JAL), took effect on 1 April and will run for five years, having been officially launched on 25 December 2019 by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi. The program is being established by the Government of India (GoI) with […]
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Helping Vietnam modernise irrigation for high-value crops
A team of Australian irrigation experts visited Vietnam in March to provide technical guidance on two new initiatives implemented as a result of the Water Efficiency Improvement in Drought Affected Provinces (WEIDAP) program – a US$120 million Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded project being assisted by the Australian Water Partnership (AWP). After Vietnam suffered a severe […]
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Advancing Australian groundwater expertise through the Asian Development Bank
AWP’s Groundwater Specialist, Sanmugam Prathapar, will be finalising his secondment with ADB on 30 April, having played a key role in strengthening the partnership between the two organisations, and helping to share Australian expertise for over two years. The rapid increase in lending for water infrastructure and limited water resources expertise at the Asian Development […]
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Remaining agile and responsive in a changing environment: How AWP is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic
Australia has recently suffered devastating bushfires, hail, storms and floods all in the span of a few months, but there appears to be no greater challenge than the COVID-19 pandemic, which has surpassed 2 million infected people worldwide and resulted in more than 140,000 confirmed deaths. On 27 February, the Australian Government activated its emergency […]
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