How cities will prepare for the future was the pressing question at the forefront of the International Conference of Local and Regional Authorities for Water. The conference, held 21-22March during the 8th World Water Forum in Brasilia, brought together hundreds of local and regional authoritiesto share their experience, achievements and solutions in relation to water issues.
Co-organized by the World Water Council, UN Habitat through its Global Water Operators Partnerships Alliance, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the Secretariat for Federative Affairs of the Presidency of the Federative Republic of Brazil, United Cities and Local Governments, and the Confederação Nacional de Municípios, the conference emphasized the importance of sustainable water management to pave the way towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030.
Cooperation on improved water and sanitation services and multi-level governance on water is essential to securing water and sustaining a new urban future. In light of the need for immediate action on water-related issues to reduce widespread water crises, the World Water Council has released a guide, Start with Water: Putting water on local action agendas to support global change. This guide seeks to provide strategies and support to help cities make concrete contributions to global agendas. Presented as a set of eight recommendations, which detail water management, decentralizing finances, and urban risk planning, among others, in addition to incorporating concrete examples from around the world, the first-of-its-kind guide was launched during the International Conference of Local and Regional Authorities for Water.

The world’s newest nation, South Sudan, has succeeded in interrupting transmission of Guinea worm disease, the country’s minister of health announced Wednesday at The Carter Center. As of the end of February 2018, South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, has recorded zero cases of Guinea worm disease for 15 consecutive months. Because the Guinea worm life cycle is about a year, a 15-month absence of cases indicates the interruption of transmission.
“This is a great achievement for our young nation,” Dr. Riek Gai Kok, South Sudan’s health minister, said during the global Guinea Worm Eradication Program’s 22nd annual review at The Carter Center. “Our health workers and thousands of volunteers have done exemplary work eliminating this disease across our country, and I have no doubt that the World Health Organization will grant certification in due time.”
Dr. TebebeYemaneBerhan, goodwill ambassador for Guinea worm eradication in Ethiopia, participated in the announcement, as did Dr. Gautam Biswas of the WHO. Representing The Carter Center were Dr. Ernesto Ruiz-Tiben and Dr. Donald R. Hopkins, both original architects of the Guinea worm eradication campaign.
The WHO has certified 199 countries, territories, and areas as free of Guinea worm disease. Kenya received WHO certification in February, having detected no cases since 1994. As South Sudan enters the precertification stage, the only countries remaining to be certified are Angola, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, and Sudan.
Chad and Ethiopia each reported 15 cases in 2017. Those 30 were the only cases in the world in 2017; when The Carter Center began leading the Guinea worm eradication campaign in 1986, there were an estimated 3.5 million cases annually in 21 countries on two continents.

GE’s Power Services business and FieldCore, GE’s customer-focused field services company, announced to have successfully restarted Metahara Sugar factoryin Ethiopia, seven months after the plant was severely damaged by a major thunderstorm. The outage execution service of two steam turbines, which lasted 20 days, succeeded in bringing back 5,000 person workforce and solving sugar scarcity for Ethiopia’s more than 100million population.
Metahara’s Deputy Factory Manager FahmiDawud said that the team providing solutions and getting the factory back up and running in a record 20 days was a miracle. “We had lost all hope that these extremely aged units, manufactured by Compagnie Electro Mecanique, in the fifties, would ever come online again due to the damage. Hotels and supermarkets had run out of sugar and it was a critical situation. We are indeed excited to hear the machines humming again.”
GE’s scope of work for this execution included provision of qualified personnel, inspection, servicing, testing and commissioning of the assets, safety and control devices, lube oil supply, speed reduction gear box, generators, control panels with AVRs as well as cold and hot recommissioning of the steam turbines.
“GE created a new industrial field services company – FieldCore – to bring together field expertise and more than 10,500 people from Granite Services and GE’s Power Services business into one field services company whose goal is world-class execution for our customers.” said EliseeSezan, General manager, GE’s Power Services business for Sub-Saharan Africa.
“We all experienced a great sense of accomplishment when the turbines were revived at startup. This project reflects the passion, the wealth of power generation experience and the world-class services capabilities that keeps GE and FieldCore competitive and consistent around the globe for customers” he added.