GRIPP five-year anniversary celebrations at World Water Week 2021

GRIPP video for the five-year anniversary: Providing Solutions to a Resilient Groundwater-dependent Future (photo/video: Pradeep Liyanage, IWMI).

The Groundwater Solutions Initiative for Policy and Practice (GRIPP) is celebrating its five-year anniversary this week. It is with great pride and gratitude that we announce this, and take this opportunity to look back and take stock as well as look ahead to the next five years.

The anniversary will be celebrated at World Water Week 2021 on August 27, 2021 (Friday) from 17:00 to 18:00 CEST during the session titled Valuing Partnerships and (Trans-)Formative Processes for Resilience from the Subsurface.

A video on ‘Providing Solutions to a resilient Groundwater-dependent Future’ has been produced by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) as a landmark outcome of GRIPP. Together with experts, both within and outside the groundwater community, the video explores the key role GRIPP has played, and also provides an opportunity to look forward to 2022, the UN-Water designated year of groundwater, and key high-level events on the horizon, e.g., the 2023 United Nations Conference on the Water Action Decade.

The experts concur in a call for greater attention to groundwater as a key resource for a resilient development path and that this requires a solid business case for investments going forward. They also call for a solutions agenda that includes groundwater as a critical solution broker that will help us leapfrog to a more sustainable future.

This session gives us the opportunity to congratulate and thank all the GRIPP partners for their strong contributions to the partnership. The session will provide a snapshot of the many activities and outcomes achieved by GRIPP throughout the last five years, which includes the following:

The Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater for the Poor (UPGro) program and the legacy of its work in Africa to unlock groundwater for poverty alleviation in Sub-Saharan Africa, presented by the British Geological Survey (BGS).
[watch the video]
The participatory water-food-energy assessments completed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in the Zambezi River Basin.
[watch the video]
The thrust for capacity development on the American continent by the American Groundwater Trust.
[watch the video]
The work and achievements of the Climate Justice Fund Water Futures Programme in Malawi by the University of Strathclyde, Scotland.
[watch the video]
Ongoing work by the University of Victoria, Canada, to increase awareness and capacity on integrated groundwater development in innovative curricula.
[watch the video]

The session will conclude with an interactive panel reflecting on GRIPP’s next ‘big-ticket’ work around groundwater for sustainable development going forward. Feedback will also be provided by high-level representatives from the capacity development and management sectors in Africa and South Asia – current global hot spots where groundwater is used for socioeconomic development – along with views from the donor community and the largest association for hydrogeologists worldwide, the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH).

Watch the GRIPP five-year anniversary video on ‘Providing Solutions to a Resilient Groundwater-dependent Future’

View the program for the GRIPP session at World Water Week 2021