Water Security. Proceedings of the Expert Workshop, May 15-20, 2017 - Mekelle, Ethiopia

Nowadays, deterioration of global fresh water resources is the most challenging question and it has become one of the forefront scientific and political agenda in relation to global environmental changes in climate, land-use, and bio-diversity. Water is not adequately available in required quantity and quality in many parts of the world especially in developing countries. Water still remains to be an essential component of life, and hence governments and other agents need to work on securing water to the society. Water security is regarded as the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality of water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development.

Thus, finding solutions to water security and related problems through strong collabo-ration among researchers, stakeholders, governments, non-governmental organizations and the communities is required. Therefore, stakeholders need to meet in a discussion forum such as expert workshop to explore water security related problems and to develop mitigation measures. The expert workshop also creates a co-learning environ-ment among different experts and knowledge exchange through experiences from different parts of the world.

The workshop in Mekelle, Ethiopia of the Sub-Saharan Regional Network of Exceed Swindon focused on a multidisciplinary approach to water security challenges and its solutions with special emphasis on distribution and availability of fresh and drinking waters, water scarcity, quality and pollution aspects of water, water governance, trans- boundary water resources management, and other related issues, among which are the drivers land-use systems and climatic conditions.