Connect: GRID-Arendal Annual Report 2017

Connected solutions

All of GRID-Arendal’s projects are designed to find solutions to the environmental problems we are facing. Solutions, of course, come from people. At GRID-Arendal, we work with people from all walks of life who are dedicated to finding solutions.

As we have seen from the previous sections on water and waste, how we manage our collective water resources is key to the long-term health of the planet. But how do we know what’s been tried and what has worked? GRID- Arendal is working with UN Environment on just this issue through the GEF IW:Learn project. The acronym stands for the Global Environment Facility International Waters: Learning Exchange and Resource Network. IW:LEARN was established to strengthen transboundary water management around the globe by collecting and sharing best practices, lessons learned and innovative solutions to common problems. It promotes learning among project managers, country officials, implementing agencies and other partners. GRID-Arendal leads a part of this complex, multi-year project that focuses on providing

access to an integrated suite of dynamic tools and reliable knowledge networks, project and partner platforms and portals to support decision making processes at the national, regional and global levels. One such tool is the IW:LEARN Spatial Lab, a unique visualization tool that allows users to discover GEF International Waters activities around the world. A training session on the spatial lab was held in Cape Town, South Africa, in November. Training materials, including a series of tutorial videos, are now available on the website which GRID-Arendal redesigned in 2017. In addition to the new website, GRID-Arendal has also developed a web toolkit to assist other IW projects to easily create their own project websites.

IW:LEARN website.

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