Clean Tigris project holds multi-stakeholder dialogue workshops

The project’s second and third multi-stakeholder dialogue workshops on sustainable water resource management in Iraq took place from 13th-15th and from 17th-19th of June in Erbil. The workshops brought together high-level officials from cities’ administration and water departments as well as academia and civil society, in a joint effort to find sustainable solutions to fight water pollution and strive to improve water management in the country.

The second workshop gathered stakeholders from southern Iraq’s highly affected cities of Nassiriya, Dhi Kar and
Basrah. The third workshop focussed on the challenges in Central Iraq and Baghdad. Both workshops were followed by a press conference led by elbarlament, joined by high-ranking representatives of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Baghdad and Basrah, namely:

• Director-General of Dams and Water Reservoirs in the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources in the Kurdistan Region, Akram Ahmed Rasoul
• General Director of Water and Sewage in KRG, Ari Ahmed Qader
• Member of the Council of Representatives, Mohamedamin Faris Amin
• Director of Women Empowerment Department for CSOs in Basrah, Mrs Enas Ismael Jabber Al Gburi
• Advisor of Basrah Major for Environmental Issues, Ahmad Hanoun Jasim
• President of Erbil Provincial Council, Dr Ali Rashid Khoshnaw and
• Director-General of the Marshland and Wetland Rehabilitation Center, Samira Abed Mohi Al Shabeeb.

You can watch the press conference here.

The sessions were moderated by water expert Dr Sameh Almoqdadi. The next and last dialogue workshop, programmed to take place around September this year, will gather selected participants from the whole country of Iraq to discuss the outcomes of all previous workshops and to prepare a joint roadmap for water resource management in Iraq.

The dialogue is not limited to Iraq, but also invites stakeholders from neighbouring countries to discuss water related issues through the project’s online dialogue platform: http://cleantigris.website/

A similar dialogue meeting focusing on the Iraki Kurdistan Region and Ninewa governorate was successfully held by the Clean Tigris project from 27th to 29th May 2021.

The two years dialogue project is an initiative by elbarlament and funded by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa)
with funds from the German Federal Foreign Office.