Reflecting on AGWA's 2021 Achievements

As we turn the page in the calendar to 2022, those of us in the AGWA Secretariat are very excited for the year ahead. We often find that January is a good time to not only plan ahead, but to reflect on all that we have collectively achieved through AGWA — none of which would have been possible without the continued support of our 2100+ member network.

To see how much has been accomplished in the last twelve months, we have put together the following list of major 2021 highlights: 

Organizational Developments

  • AGWA’s budget for 2021 nearly tripled over the previous year, marking several long-term grants and partnership agreements to cover new workstreams and activities.

  • Our secretariat expanded to match our growing swathe of programming. We added a Project Manager for one of our flagship projects as well as a part-time bookkeeper / finance manager, Amanda Kanter. This is on top of quadrupling the number of short-term project-specific consultants we partner with.

  • Communication and messaging took a step forward as AGWA hired two comms professionals to support our engagement with the press and broader communication efforts.

  • Membership grew steadily, with a 10% increase in the past year to over 2100 members.

  • Instead of in Stockholm, we yet again held our Annual Members Meeting online due to COVID-19 restrictions. Two separate meetings allowed for greater participation across time zones.

  • AGWA has two new Co-Chairs to its Board of Directors. James Dalton (IUCN) and Louise Whiting (FAO) took over for Maggie White (SIWI) and Diego Rodriguez (World Bank). Other Board changes include the addition of two new members: Rachael McDonnell (IWMI) and Tom Panella (ADB).

  • We launched several new publications throughout the year: a policy brief on bottom-up approaches co-published with UNESCO, a white paper on NBS and Deep Resilience co-published with Forest Trends, and chapter contributions from AGWA members to a full book on NBS and water security.

  • AGWA regularly participated in other climate or water conferences throughout the year including Adaptation Futures, Cairo Water Week, GWOPA Congress, and many more, some mentioned in context below.

  • AGWA’s ClimateReady podcast ran a successful policy-focused miniseries around COP26 with four new episodes and another 5,600 plays.

Policy Engagement

  • AGWA (finally!) received official observer organization status with the UNFCCC and sent our first independent delegation to COP26 in Glasgow.

  • We organized sessions in noteworthy climate policy events including Climate Adaptation Summit (January) and the Petersberg Climate Dialogues (May). AGWA also contributed to Climate Week NYC and the UNFCCC’s Asia-Pacific Regional Climate Week.

  • We continued to represent the water community in international climate policy processes, including active participation in the UNFCCC Adaptation Committee, Marrakech Partnership for Global Climate Action (MPGCA), and inputs to the High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters (HELP).

  • As part of the Adaptation Action Coalition, AGWA began to develop and apply the Water Tracker for National Climate Planning. In collaboration with GWP, SWA, and UNICEF, we are piloting the tool and associated guidance directly with countries to help identify and strengthen water linkages in national climate plans. About two dozen countries have expressed interest in the Tracker.

  • In direct country support, we have worked with GIZ’s Bolivia country office to support the Bolivian government with targeted climate-centric adaptation guidance as part of the larger PROCUENCA watersheds program.

  • AGWA is a lead organization in the UNFCCC CASTT Adaptation Academy — a training program for national adaptation focal points around MRV and NDC guidance. The first courses took place online in Sept./Oct. with 100 participants from 65 countries.

  • AGWA served on the steering committee of the first-ever dedicated Water Pavilion at COP26. Across 11 days, the pavilion included over 100 events and 200 unique speakers, with hundreds of in-person and thousands of online audience members.

  • We sent our largest ever delegation to a COP, with four on-the-ground participants in Glasgow on top of board members and other collaborators. AGWA co-organized or participated in over 20 official sessions on top of other engagements.

Technical Programming

  • Under Pacific Institute, AGWA was one of the lead developers of the Water Resilience Assessment Framework (WRAF). This tool for systematically quantifying water resilience was launched at World Water Week in August.

  • With UNESCO and ICIWaRM, we hosted a year-long webinar series on bottom-up approaches to climate adaptation featuring case studies and panel discussions, with 35 different speakers and between 200-300 attendees per session.

  • With UNESCO and ICIWaRM, we co-organized a global water resilience conference focusing on bottom-up risk assessment/reduction approaches in October with over 50 speakers and 650 participants.

  • AGWA has been active in a number of ongoing or potential pilot applications of the CRIDA approach to climate risk assessment, as well as capacity building efforts (workshops, coursework, etc.). A Spanish version of the CRIDA publication was released last January.

AGWAAGWAAGWA, 2021Comment