Frederick Bouckaert, PhD
President of the board of directors
IWCAN is a Community of Practice of International Water Centre alumni, consisting of a global network of water professionals, with strong representation also within Australia. It has gained considerable expertise in coordinating and co-creating knowledge through its professional activities consisting of the kini initiative, undertaken for AWP in 2018-2019, its gender analysis for AWP and its current engagement with SEI-Asia on the project ‘Co-creating knowledge to enhance Women’s Leadership for Inclusive River Governance and Livelihood Resilience in the Mekong Region’ for the SUMERNET research network.
In addition, IWCAN member Kristen Tonga led the Bottleneck Fund Initiative. With IWCAN support, the Bottleneck Fund was able to provide mini-grants to six NGOs operating in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and Nepal to address primary and secondary impacts of COVID-19 in these countries. The hypothesis that we operated under was that small amounts of funding could make a significant difference to support NGOs to continue to do their work at the outset of the global pandemic.
IWCAN also engaged its first intern, who interviewed the African members of IWCAN to strengthen their engagement. This work was highly valuable and will require follow up to find ways to connect and strengthen our CoP.
In addition, IWCAN has organized a 10 year ‘reunion’ online event, consisting of presentations of members on IWRM in their professional roles, an online brainstorming session on current IWRM challenges and a cohort mentoring linkage with recent graduates. IWCAN is currently co-hosting with the International Water Centre (IWC) a series of webinars on current IWRM topics, including:
- The role of water markets (November 2021)
- IWRM perspectives in Africa (December 2021)
- Household water insecurity experiences (February 2022)
- Water scarcity in the Asia-Pacific (March 2022; coming up)
IWCAN was established in 2012 and is set up as a not-for-profit organization (company limited by guarantee), based in Brisbane. Its Board meets on a regular base (at least quarterly or more frequently as required), to set strategic direction and resource project-based committees, and holds an AGM on a yearly basis.
IWCAN is actively looking for partnerships with other organisations and initiatives to make a difference on the ground in integrated water resource management across the food-energy-water nexus.
