Ambassador Frank Urbancic at the opening of Water Summit

As part of its ongoing efforts to improve local capacity to better manage natural resources—including water—the USAID-funded Supporting Activities that Value the Environment (SAVE) project organized a two-day “Water Summit” to address critical water issues. Building on the results of several pilot activities, including in the areas of water quality, well management, water modeling and soil moisture testing, the Summit brought together water and agricultural managers, key users groups, international experts and the donor community and focused on ways to reduce demand for water to match the island’s meager and dwindling supplies.

The “Water Summit: Critical Resources, Critical Questions” was opened at an event on Monday, June 29, 2009, with remarks by U.S. Ambassador Frank C. Urbancic. The keynote speech was given by Mr. Doug Clark, Senior Vice President of International Resources Group (IRG) of Washington, D.C. With more than 30 years of experience worldwide addressing water, agriculture, irrigation and economic development issues, Mr. Clark outlined how other countries are tackling some of the very same issues faced by Cyprus. USAID Representative Alan Davis opened the technical sessions on June 30, 2009, and participated in many of the discussions that followed.

Over a day and a half, the Summit built on lessons learned from SAVE’s different capacity building and pilot activities and applied international best practices to Cyprus’ realities—including the fact that existing groundwater supplies continue to shrink while the demand for those supplies continues to grow.

The objective of the Summit was to develop concrete, comprehensive and, most importantly, practical and productive approaches that will both protect precious water resources and increase the economic return of water. Sound environmental management, and especially sound water management, is vital to economic growth and productivity. Like all U.S.-funded programs in Cyprus, SAVE is aimed at facilitating reunification of the island, including through better protection and management of the island’s critical natural resources.