Concluding Meeting of the 23rd OSCE Economic and Environmental Forum

Conference

Date:: 14 - 16 September 2015
Location:: Prague, Czech Republic
Organized by:: Serbia's 2015 OSCE Chairmanship and the Office of the Co-ordinator of OSCE Economic and Environmental Activities
Series:: Economic and Environmental Forum
Source:: OSCE Chairpersonship, OSCE Secretariat
Fields of work:: Economic activities, Environmental activities

The 2015 Concluding Meeting builds upon the results stemmed from the two Preparatory Meetings held in Vienna on 26-27 January and in Belgrade on 11-13 May, will examine and discuss the level of implementation of OSCE commitments and will also aim at deepening OSCE’s engagement in the field of water governance.

The two-way relationship between water and security - water as a source of conflict and water co-operation as a tool for conflict prevention - makes “water” an important topic for the OSCE. Today, water issues remain at the center of attention, as global population increases, thus pressuring the use of water resources. Water governance has and will continue to play a major factor in local, regional and global security.

The Plenary Sessions will focus on:

Review of the implementation of the OSCE commitments in the field of water governance;
The benefits of good water governance across different levels;
Water governance within the water-food-energy-ecosystems-nexus and in the context of sustainable development;
Water governance at national level – best practices and new approaches in the OSCE region - , as well as at transboundary level: lessons learnt for water diplomacy;
Facilitating effective water governance in the context of new environmental challenges;
Governing waters for effective disaster risk reduction;
Strengthening participation of civil society and the private sector and awareness raising for effective water governance.

The Economic and Environmental Forum is the main annual event in the OSCE's economic and environmental dimension. The Forum process provides a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue, by bringing together officials from the 57 OSCE participating States and 11 OSCE Partner for Co-operation countries, high-level representatives from international organizations, as well as from the civil society, the academic and the business community. Its main objective is to stimulate deeper political dialogue, and generate commitments and recommendations for concrete activities to assist countries in dealing with economic and environmental aspects of security.