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Aquatic Habitats in Sustainable Urban Water Management 'Aquatic habitats supply a wide range of vital ecosystem benefits to cities and their inhabitants. The unsustainable use of aquatic habitats, including inadequate urban water management itself, however, tends to alter and reduce their biodiversity and therewith diminish their ability to provide clean water, protect us from waterborne diseases and pollutants, keep urban areas safe from flooding, and support recreational ecosystem services and even the aesthetic enjoyment of our world. Aquatic Habitats in Sustainable Urban Water Management - the result of collaboration between UNESCO's International Hydrological Programme and its Man and the Biosphere Programme - aims at improving our understanding of aquatic habitats, related ecosystem goods and services, and conservation and sustainable use - with a special focus on their integration into urban water management.

This report presents the public financial management and accountability assessment (PFMAA) for Pakistan's Sindh province. The assessment uses the public expenditure and financial accountability (PEFA) 20051 framework, which comprises 31 performance indicators to evaluate (i) the six core public financial management (PFM) dimensions (credibility of the budget; transparency and comprehensiveness; policy-based budgeting; predictability and control in budget execution; accounting, recording, and reporting; and external scrutiny), and (ii) the extent to which donor practices and the management of donor funds affect the PFM systems in the country. This assessment report highlights the likely impact of PFM weaknesses on budgetary outcomes, aggregate fiscal discipline, the strategic allocation of resources, and efficient service delivery.

By 2025, three billion people will live in water-stressed countries. Management of the world's limited water resources, especially for food production, remains one of the most pressing issues in development. As part of its mandate for innovation in capacity development, the World Bank Institute (WBI) has been building and implementing several creative tools to foster more effective water management. The WBI Water Program is using role plays, games and hands-on simulations, as well as multimedia, to help organizations increase their capacity and skills so they can implement effective management solutions, improve their economic growth, and deliver better water services. These inventive techniques can be used in various settings and can easily be scaled up through local organizations.

This guide is written for MFIs committed to managing and achieving their social mission, and the organisations that support them. Inside, you will find step-by-step guidance on integrating a social lens into your performance management systems. This practice guide draws upon experience and lessons learnt from over 45 MFIs and support organisations across the industry, detailing: - Different entry points into SPM - Case examples from the field - Key issues at each step of the process - Practical tips and clear guidance - Further resources and support Whatever your starting point, you can use this guide to strengthen the systems you use to deliberately balance your social and financial objectives.

3rd United Nations World Water Development Report: Water in a Changing World 'The third edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report, 'Water in a Changing World' was presented recently at the Fifth World Water Forum in Istanbul, Turkey on March 16, 2009. This report builds on the work of previous studies, including the two previous World Water Development Reports, and has a new, holistic format. A major theme of this report is that important decisions affecting water management are made outside the water sector and are driven by external, largely unpredictable forces - forces of demography, climate change, the global economy, changing societal values and norms, technological innovation, laws and customs and financial markets. Many of these external drivers are dynamic, and changes are accelerating. The report emphasizes that decisions in other sectors and those related to development, growth and livelihoods should incorporate water as an integral component, including responses to climate change, food and energy challenges and disaster management. The report is available for download and can also be accessed online.'

'Conflict is an unavoidable aspect of human social systems. Given the central importance of water resources to all human communities, it is natural that conflicts arise with regard to access, allocation, development and management of the resource.'

This guide has been produced by the World Health Organization to assist countries with limited resources in their efforts to reduce neonatal mortality and to ensure care for newborn babies with problems due to complications of pregnancy and childbirth, such as asphyxia, sepsis, and low birth weight or preterm birth. The main section of this guide is arranged by clinical signs or findings, which facilitates early identification of illness, and provides up-to-date guidelines for clinical management. Use of these guidelines is essential in promoting and assessing the quality of health services and training providers and supporting quality services through supervision and feedback on performance.

This document includes an overview of the September 2007 meeting which was convened to consider program needs and identify critical research to accelerate the availability and use of safe, effective, affordable, simple, and feasible community case management approaches for neonatal sepsis/infection among families with no or limited access to facility-based care.

'This paper argues that understanding the link between global capitalist crisis macrodynamics and water commodification trends requires a discussion of the crucial intervening public management strategy, namely the decentralisation of service delivery functions without decentralisation of sufficient resources. The crucial linkage between these processes emanates from core multilateral institutions, like the UN.'

The world's poor are disproportionately affected by environmental degradation and lack of access to clean, affordable energy services. Climate change, loss of biodiversity and depletion of natural resources are both national and global issues requiring cooperation among all countries. UNDP works to strengthen national capacity to manage the environment in a sustainable manner while ensuring adequate protection for the poor, by identifying and sharing best practices, providing policy advice and forging partnerships.

Recently, gender perspectives have received more attention from various stakeholders due to consistent global advocacy and awareness-raising efforts that highlighted the importance of gender equality in disaster risk reduction. However, progress in mainstreaming gender perspectives into disaster risk reduction remains inadequate. Gender considerations are still largely marginalized from the disaster risk reduction process. Based on information provided in national reports on disaster risk reduction, such marginalization of women is especially true at the national level. In daily realities, women are key victims as well as resilient forces to natural disasters. Sri-Lanka Disaster Management Minister, Mahinda Samarasinghe, talks about the role played by women in disaster risk reduction and how gender issues have to be linked to the sustainable development goals nations want to achieve.

Pertinent questions and sound methodologies are essential for quality research, as are quality partnerships. By what criteria do we select partners and how do we build meaningful partnerships that add value to our research efforts? And that contribute to improving the overall landscape for the development and use of research? We would like to propose several areas of concern for partnership development and management that many of us deal with on a daily basis and that might seem obvious but nonetheless merit repetition as we still do not integrate them fully into our work. Drawing on personal experience in a research network, this essay invites reflections from others in grappling with questions related to the development of quality partnerships for quality research. We try to present here perspectives of research units, networks and institutions, including university-based ones, particularly in West and Central African contexts.

The InnoWat team has created the kit InnoWat: Water, innovations, learning and rural livelihoods with the expectation that it will be useful to IFAD's country programme managers (CPMs) and will enhance IFAD's comparative advantage in rural poverty alleviation and water issues. The present text synthesizes two approach papers that together provide the rationale for a new, pro-poor approach to water issues. A series of topic, fact and tool sheets and case studies supports the papers.

'The objective of the Sindh Education Sector Reform Project for Pakistan is to increase school participation, reduce gender and rural/urban disparities in schooling outcomes, increase retention and transition, and improve quality. The key potential environmental and safety issues related to the program include: (i) liquid and solid wastes generated during school construction and operation; (ii) lack of adequate measures, both at the design and construction stages, to address the schools´ vulnerabilities to natural disasters (both in new and rehabilitated schools); (iii) drinking water contamination and lack of adequate sanitation facilities; (iv) lack of education programs for children in personal hygiene and safety procedures during emergencies; (v) lack of low-cost renewable power systems in schools located in off-grid areas, resulting in an inadequate learning environment for children (excessive heat and poor lightning), and preventing the use of low-cost water decontamination techniques; and (vi) land acquisition issues.