Welcome to the worksite for the first IW:LEARN workshop on river basin learning. The topic of this workshop is the application of economic valuation to water-related decision-making

Through the Water and Nature Initiative (WANI), IUCN is engaged in a three year partnership with GEF IW:LEARN, which aims to strengthen Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) by facilitating structured learning and information sharing among stakeholders in transboundary water resources. IUCN-WANI is the Project Activity Leader (PAL) for learning relating to the freshwater – particularly river basin – subset of the GEF International Waters portfolio, under IW:LEARN Activity B2.1.2.

This workshop is being organised in response to needs assessment conducted with the GEF constituency prior to and during the International Water Conference in Brazil in June 2005, and experience from Water and Nature Initiative projects. These showed that there is high demand for better understanding of the concepts and tools of economic valuation of ecosystems. Key issues include how to quantify the benefits generated by ecosystems goods and services and how to apply valuations to support decision making and options assessments. Demand is particularly high in Africa where IWRM and environmental flows are being actively promoted at national and transboundary scales.