Water for Peace: Preventing Conflict Related to Water and Wetlands (Session at Fragility Forum 2020)


Mar 3, 2020 | World Bank
Washington, DC
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Preventing conflict saves lives and costs. However, only a tiny amount of Official Development Aid is spent at conflict prevention. Important reasons are that it is both difficult to translate conflict prevention into programming, as well as to quantify and measure success of conflict prevention. How does this play out for water-related conflict? Water scarcity and wetland degradation contribute to (violent) conflict about natural resources. The Water, Peace and Security partnership (WPS) and the Geneva Water Hub organize a hands-on session about implementation and measuring the success of programmes that aim to prevent, mitigate and resolve water-related conflict. 

There will be three brief plenary introductions:

  • Dominick Revell de Waal (World Bank) will talk about failures that drive the water insecurity- fragility cycle and approaches to reversing the cycle.
  • Karounga Keïta (Wetlands International) will zoom in on Mali to discuss programming related to water, wetlands and conflict prevention.
  • Aseel Naamani (International Alert) will talk about measuring the impact of water-related programs on conflict prevention and sustainable peace.

After these introductions participants split up in groups. There is ample time to exchange experiences regarding programmes about water and wetlands in fragile situations, and to discuss metrics used to measure their success in terms of conflict prevention. Groups get back in plenary to exchange their findings and to draw conclusions. The language of the session is English.

Session objectives

The WPS partnership and the Geneva Water Hub aim to create a space to share knowledge, experiences and new ideas about prevention of water related conflict. The session brings together practitioners,
policymakers and academics working in the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors, with various experiences on water management.

Objectives of the session are to:

  1. Break silos and build bridges between different sectors and areas of expertise by connecting practitioners, policy makers and academics from different sectors, regions and disciplines,
  2. Show ways to mitigate water-related conflict by collecting good practices about water and wetland related programs that aim to prevent and reduce conflict in fragile situations,
  3. Enhance collaborative thinking about measuring impact by mapping experiences in measuring and quantifying the impact of water and wetland related programs on conflict prevention and sustainable peace


What: Water for peace: preventing conflict related to water and wetlands
When: Tuesday March 3, 2020, 4:00 – 5:30, Room MC C2-350