The ICID-Young Professional Forum has managed to hold a one day
workshop on CAPACITY BUILDING AND TRAINING IN WATER SECTOR;
THE ROLE OF YOUNG PROFESSIONALS in Lahore, Pakistan, October 17, 2008.
The main goal of this workshop was to discuss how the coming
generation of water engineers should be trained and can
contribute to education, knowledge and capacity building.
ICID-YPF
The ICID Young Professionals Forum (ICID-YPF) was established in 1995 through involvement of
young professionals from different disciplines and organizations all over the world. It functions with the
objective of providing an international platform for young professionals dealing with irrigation,
drainage, flood control and environment matters, encouraging them to achieve a high standard of
professional development, and facilitating wider dissemination of knowledge and information along
the mission of ICID viz., “Managing Water for Sustainable Agriculture”, using links with national and
international networks/organizations.
SCOPE
Challenges in sustainable agriculture and irrigation world-wide are manifold basically due to the
increasing population pressure, competitions and ever increasing demands over the uses of the
scarce water resource available in terms of its quality and quantity for various purposes. During the
last decades, financial investments in water sector, especially in agriculture sector, have often failed
to bring the expected outcomes that it deserves. Lack in infrastructural set-up, institutional
frameworks, operation, management and monitoring measures were noticed. Prima-facie education,
knowledge and capacity building are given less priority and seen as one of the major factors
adversely affecting the efficiency in sustainable development of agriculture sector.
All these challenges call for innovative approaches from irrigation engineers. At the same time,
society demands that solutions and approaches from the engineers should also be traditional, sound
and foolproof. The capacity of water management institutions should be enhanced in such a way as to
ensure that they have a clear mandate, a well structured organizational set-up and an improved
decision-making support system derived through lessons learnt from indigenous knowledge and
experience gained from performance evaluation. Last but not the least it is to mention that much
learning and sharing of information is supported and validated within various information networks. It
is important for engineers and engineering students to learn to work within these peer-driven networks
even during their study period itself. While conducting the one-day workshop and keeping this fact in
view, we wish to introduce `E-platforms’ amongst the participants having capability of offering
opportunities to develop new interactive systems to search, communicate, distribute, create and save
information.
WORKSHOP THEMES
Papers are invited on the following themes:
- Use of information and communication technologies
- Education and capacity building in the water sector
- Using professional networks and associations to strengthen the water sector
- Integrated water resources management
Workshop on “Use of Water and Land for Food and Environmental Sustainability, Role of Young Professionals”
Beijing, China 12 September 2005
The Working Group on Young Irrigation Professionals Forum (WG-YPF) of the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) is organizing a one day Workshop on “Use of Water and Land for Food and Environmental Sustainability – Role of Young Professionals” in conjunction with the 56th IEC Meeting and 19th ICID Congress to be held in Beijing, China in September 2005.
All young professionals from ICID National Committees and International Organizations were invited to submit papers on any of the following sub-themes of the workshop:
• Use of Advanced Technology: Use of IT, Remote Sensing, GIS, Automation, Benchmarking etc.
• Public-Private Sector Partnership: Private Sector Participation, Participatory Irrigation Management,
O&M Contracting, etc.
• Water Saving in Irrigation:
- Adoption of High Efficiency Techniques Education and Capacity Building, Innovative Research, etc.
• Water Quality Management and Environmental Sustainability:
- Water Quality Monitoring, Reuse of Domestic and Industrial Wastewater for Irrigation, Environment Sustainability of Irrigation and Drainage Projects etc.
The Chinese National Committee of ICID (CNCID) will offer reduction in the registration fee, etc. for the young professionals. All National Committees of ICID and International Organizations are
requested to disseminate information about the YPF Workshop among their young professionals so that they can prepare and submit their scientific papers for presentation at the Workshop. The last date for receipt of the full-length papers is 15 th June 2005.
For more information about the workshop, please contact:
Mr. A.R. Salamat, Chairman, WG-YPF
E-mail: irncid@neda.net.ir or salamat_ir@yahoo.com
