 Okay well thank you everybody for joining us. This is an event on sustainable capacity development. It has a particular focus for the Sahil region and one of the things I wanted to talk about is the successes and the challenges that we have in sustainable development and capacity building in the Sahil region and my background is in isotope hydrology. I managed the water resources program at the International Atomic Energy Agency and what we do is we use isotopes to look at the movement of water through the hydrological system and we use these techniques to build a picture of the water resources in different areas and to understand how we can use water sustainably particularly as climate change starts to bite and we see movement and changes in the way in which water is distributed. When we use isotope hydrology one of the things that we want to do is we want to transfer this technology to different countries to allow them to adopt the technology and better manage their water resources but there are a number of challenges in doing this not just in the Sahil but in all areas around the world. Sometimes technology serves a good purpose and sometimes it can be difficult to adapt depending on what the circumstances are. What I'm joined here today by three people who also work in capacity development in sustainable water resource but in different areas in different aspects. So I have to my immediate right I have Stefan Julenbroek who is the director of hydrosphere water and cryosphere at the WMO. Next to him I have Christoph Henrich who is a project management officer in the technical cooperation department at the International Topic Energy Agency and next to Christoph is Elizabeth Karadine who is currently climate adviser to the UN office of the special envoy for the Horn of Africa where she works on peace and security management issues but she has previously been in the Sahil region and many of the issues between the Sahil and the Horn of Africa are very very similar. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with Henrich. The reason is that at the International Topic Energy Agency whilst we spend a lot of time developing scientific technology and innovations to help us manage water resources we also need to transfer these technologies to member states and that happens via the technical cooperation department at the agency and they they work with the department that I'm in the Department of Nuclear Sciences and Applications to help bring these skills to two countries that need to adopt them. So I'm going to hand over to Christoph to say a few words about how the technical operation program works and how this helps to build capacity development. Thank you thank you Jody very glad to be here so if it comes to capacity development in this area and actually overall when we look at how technical cooperation in the agency works I would say that one of the unique features of our assistance to member states is that we are really and that is not only looking into water areas but also in the other areas that we're really looking into building up the capacity in the country in order for them to sustainably operate these technologies going forward. So what we're usually avoiding to do is to outsource any expertise, expert assignments, publishing of reports but we rather really want to focus on building up these expertise in the country so that optimally the country once it has received the capacity picks up this knowledge and applies it sustainably in its own operations. Now of course this is a challenging work because all of us working in the development sector and looking into sustainability issues of development operations know that that this work is not easy in order to achieve actual sustainable impact and for example when we when we want to when we look into isotope hydrology and want to disseminate this knowledge into our member states we first have to actually work on improving the knowledge that these techniques exist because even among expertise among experts it is not often well known what these technologies and technologies can bring to the table in order to actually help countries to understand their resources better and once you have this knowledge that you can generate by using these technologies sustainably hopefully in your own operations it has to be ensured that this information is actually being picked up being picked up by the governments either in shaping the national policies or by other development actors that are designing water projects in that area. So events like this one here can of course help to sort of disseminate this knowledge among the international community but also governments have to increasingly be made aware of this this intersectional and interconnected work which is very challenging to do so and thirdly we we have to we have to further increase technology exchange and capacity building and utilizing their particular regional expertise so in regions that we work that share similar problems share similar capacity issues but also the same development issues or similar development issues to ensure that these countries start collaborating and actually maybe by the facilitation and support of international organizations but not or be laterally help each other and increase their capacity so that once this information that is being produced by these laboratories for example that also have to be able to ensure that they are actually working sustainable and actually that their work is being meaningful and being picked up so that they are actually being contracted later on. So I think one important statistics I wanted to say as well is that we had looked into this isotopodology linked to policymaking and in in other regions where for example significant low amount like not even 20 percent have stated of the counterparts that we have asked have stated that they are regularly using isotopodology for policymaking so there's lots of work to be done not only on the national but also on the regional and international level and I believe capacity building has to continue and continue and continue. Thank you very much Christoph. I think some of the points that you make about policy are really important that we can develop a lot of technology we can emphasize science and its importance but we need this taken up at policy level at government level and perhaps then I can hand it over to Elizabeth because Elizabeth you work with policy management peace and security aspects of water what would your be your perspectives on capacity development how it impacts the adoption of these types of innovative science and technologies at policy level. Thanks very much for inviting me to this discussion and as you said I'm working more on the political end but what we find in our work which is focusing on the horn at these days but have also applied in the Sahel is that when we're talking about very difficult issues of transboundary whether that's transboundary between states or between communities or other administrative boundaries or customary boundaries with communities or governments these are very contentious issues usually these are systems in the Sahel for example that are under various kinds of stress including climate change but also rapid social changes not to mention conflict and insecurity so what we find very much in our work in the more on the peace negotiation or side is that the technical entry points are the ones that are the most effective so when we want to to start having difficult conversations we find the technical counterparts whether they're in government or communities who can start to discuss what evidence do we have about the resources do we know you know anything about the extent of either groundwater or surface water resources do we know much about the use the answer is usually no but you usually do find very good technical people in all these contexts but with limited technological capacities like like you're saying when we start from that entry point you can build a lot of trust between the various parties at whichever level and start to really move towards the more difficult discussions of how you would allocate resources or manage across borders it's an approach we use in I can give two kinds of examples one from the Mocti region in Mali bordering Burkina Faso the example has been 29 different territorial entities trying to manage you know scarce water wetland resources their idea was to come together and create a plan sustainable development plan over 10 years so that they could have a starting point for investment and negotiation with each other what was decided quite early on was to also do a process of strategic environmental assessment alongside that to build the baseline gather all the evidence at a very in UN key of protocol standard was very important to them which at the same time as having that plan adopted by the state level then they also were able to have the SEA and the plan adopted at the same time which really gave them capacities and governance strengthened governance to implement and get additional assistance other examples that in less detail you know negotiations about transboundary water in the horn we really have to start them from a technical standpoint with technical members of those parties really as a trust building exercise and we always need more you know not necessarily human resources but data technological resources techniques that can help us to try to overcome assumptions you know clarify what the evidence is maybe bust some myths that can arise and move us towards progress on the thorny issues thank you very much Elizabeth you mentioned there at the end you mentioned data and this is something that we also deal with at the at the international Tommy energy agency the importance of data and data and information has been highlighted as one of the key accelerators for achieving SDG 6 which is well off target at the moment and capacity development will feed into trying to improve the achievement of that goal but Stefan if we might come to you the WMO of course has huge amounts of data it looks a lot at data and data management but also the WMO I guess is one of the UN organizations that really deals with transboundary issues because weather is not a national issue whether is regional continental scale so from WMO's perspective where do you see capacity development issues from from a weather perspective a climate perspective the actions that you can take thanks Jody a good question but I don't think the the main challenge is also different than what Christophe already said you know there's a huge tremendous need for more capacity building very much needs to capacity at the ground in the operational positions to really make a difference I think that is true for isotopes is true for hydrometrological data and and you name it yeah it's it's probably all the same at WMO what we are doing I would like to report one example which I think you want to have the main focus on this a hell today and what we do in the Volta Basin which is a basin it's a transboundary river basin which is shared between Ghana as most downstream country but then Mali Burkina Faso bit of Iori coast to go and be now a little bit I did I said he's here already but so it's going really a transboundary sharing of hydro of meteorological data is challenging but often possible but sharing of hydrological data is often very challenging and in many parts of the world however as you know the UN secretary general about half a year ago on world meteorological day he said well in five years from now we should have all people around the world covered by an early warning system to national hazards and then this is ambition in five years from now the wet wet 2027 we should all have all people of the world all covered now and then WMO was was tasked with the other secretary general of WMO of course and of course and here's some people helping that and then he was tasked with developing an action plan how do we how do we get that how do we get the half of the planet under early warning system because what our data shows that only half of the members of WMO have a kind of an early warning system that is up and running when it comes to floods and droughts and storms so very water related for this water based on one of our projects is it's I have to mention the adaptation fund who invests eight million for this project in this region is to cover this in a flood integrated flood and drought early warning system and we do not use isotope data yet so that's something I wanted to mention but overall it has been developed it's kind of an integrated model where you have static data and time series and you kind of combine that with the latest databases so to to issue warnings but it's not only the technological part it's also what do you do with the warning how do you inform local people how do you how do you alert them and kind of provide guidance for actions on the ground so it's really the end-to-end system from the observation down to the people who then have to act what we're doing this a lot of data is kind of integrated the data that is available but what is not done to the best of my knowledge in these type of systems is the use of isotopes data so I'm coming to your question was a long introduction is sorry for this but that's quite alright you can bring in isotopes anytime anytime and particularly I believe in the in the drought assessment drought forecasting understanding you know from which groundwater bodies that the low flows are fed getting understanding through the age of the system of kind of how vulnerable are the system how what is memory effect and what is the kind of the the amount of resources that is still there to make better assessments of future development of that droughts isotopes would be there but I do the best of my knowledge they're not used so so even if I I I applaud for that for all the capacity building you're doing but but it's still kind of a not not mainstream not operational in many many regions of the world including in the Sahel so that's a challenge that I'm fully prepared to take on we at the the IAEA are very committed to nuclear sciences as you know and I just think it's important to highlight how powerful nuclear sciences are in terms of water sustainability because nuclear science really we're just talking about sciences that occur at the atomic scale and in isotope hydrology what we are doing is that we're saying that instead of just having a water molecule we have an isotopic water molecule and you can have different types of water molecules depending on the isotope composition and we can interrogate the differences in those isotope compositions to understand the history of that water molecule how old is it where is it come from what was its source region and I think a lot of the issues that you're talking about in terms of early warning one of the things or one of the areas that we can contribute with isotope hydrology is understanding where the molecule has come from how long has it's been sitting in the system and what do we think is going to happen and be the response to these types of or to the types of events you're talking about floods and droughts what impact do they have on the hydrological cycle but one of the one of the pieces of information that we need for that is monitoring data right we need to understand how the system is changing what are the hydrological alterations so in the work that we do in collaboration with the technical cooperation department we for example in this region we we run a large project called the the regional Africa 7021 project and as part of that project we are supporting capacity development by investing in students we are funding MSc students we are funding PhD students to learn about isotope hydrology techniques to learn about the science how it helps with water management and hopefully those people who have that strong technical background will go on into the policy framework the government framework and help to bring the science into the mainstream but let me just ask you a question with a slightly different focus when we support those students they need to go out into the field and they need to collect a physical sample with the WMO as you're saying with with improving meteorological records a lot of the focus of the WMO has been on automation of information how do you think that intersects with capacity development because from our perspective say for example with isotope hydrology a lot of it is based on physically doing something with a student with them collecting a sample with them learning techniques and then building up this capacity and sending it through the system but what happens what are the consequences for example of automating these systems so there's no longer a person who physically takes a sample putting you on the spot there yeah no thank you very very good question i'm sure it depends on what type of isotope so are we talking about if it's a stabilizer tropes of the water molecule that that's easy like that taking a sample is relatively easy you need to protect the sample from evaporation as you're very well known but it's not it's it's not so difficult if we talk about gases that that's much more complicated if we talk about tritium it's also at least you need more volume and you need very advanced techniques to actually analyze it i the best of my knowledge only a year and a few a couple of others laboratories actually can do the analysis so it depends on the isotopes i the i have the feeling it's so rare the data and so the optimization of taking the sample is not is not the is not the obstacle i think it's the knowledge it's the last the lack of investment into these data sets anyhow if we get people interested in the data if we see if we if they understand the usability of it if they understand how much that can help them to to actually predict you know so much water is still somewhere in the catchment because we have um water of i don't know preseason or or or kind of paleo groundwater whatever so so really get getting a better understanding of the physical system and appreciating that then then we also find somebody to take the sample i believe so i don't think that the optimization of sampling is i would think it's not the biggest obstacle but it's more kind of mainstreaming that into our activity so it's kind of maybe i have a good ally i know the ia here is somebody who has some isotope hydrology background but also working at wmo maybe together we can make a difference and kind of get isotope data collection more into the into the operational monitoring systems yeah that's certainly one of our goals um with um it's interesting that the the different perspectives that we have on what are important what is doable what is not doable and this i i think comes into the issues of of capacity development what we can and we can't do and it's interesting to hear the different types of perspectives um if i come back to elizabeth now though um i know you have some background in water quality and this is this is a little bit um uh different to what we we've done previously we have increasingly um a strong focus on water quality because this is uh an issue that we see that has a very strong trans boundary focus in it because there are a lot of different um industries that are impacting on water quality as they come through how how is that tape being taken up at government level because i i think that water quality is increasingly becoming a very core issue uh for many governments worldwide and the the impact that deteriorating water quality has on the amount of water that is available to do specific types of tasks for example drinking water water for agriculture for growing crops for running industry what is there a perspective that you have on that yeah i think uh there's increasing focus on that at at the same time as you start to see in some of the countries of both the regions i've been discussing um more emphasis on environmental justice and climate justice and attention on you know environmental conditions um and where i have worked on it a bit more intensely is actually in the horn in the rift valley lakes around the development of agriculture and particularly flower farms um was my perspective working with the dutch government uh around the lakes of ethiopia and and kenya and to some extent uganda and i mean that's been a long term problem but we start to see a lot more um in interest of those three governments to address the problem uh and at the same time of the businesses involved uh whether you know private sector so to to join up on the planning around uh you know the use of the water but also addressing quality issues invasive species issues there's a whole whole range uh and voluntarily adopting some standards um you know as an industry uh to to try to invest uh private investment into addressing the problem of water quality knowing that the the business uh horizon is limited if if that's not addressed and i think the the pressure i mean you see new regulations and laws coming in around the the climate policies that these countries are adopting kenya and uganda for example have climate bills now where communities can you know hold their governments accountable um for issues that are affecting them related to climate change and sometimes environmental factors and you see those courses uh court cases being being uh you know brought forward and those are usually around forests or around water uh and you know the the whole sustainability issue often young people very passionate about this too so governments are responding uh to the change in emphasis thank you for that so let's just come back to young people kristoff um the agency has um a number of programs actions to support young people do you want to maybe elaborate on those i mean i know that i could as well but i think from that's one of the focuses of the technical cooperation is bringing that capacity and particularly on young people bringing them into the sciences how do can you maybe get provide some statements about how that works from technical corporations perspective so um as you have been uh already sort of pointing out before uh a lot of our capacity building activities and trainings that we offer are really hands on so we try to enable young scientists researchers to go into the field to go to a hosting organization and to actually stay with them for a couple of months even to really uptake uh and intensify the knowledge that can be transferred to them this is sort of what we call a fellowship and uh is our longest term individual training and we we also do of course national uh shorter term training courses where we provide the expertise from outside we do a lot of regional exchanges regional training courses that are maybe not as long but often also hands on and uh which enable the already mentioned by myself um um regional cooperation that is uh very very important as well um for example in uh the covid pandemic we were as i guess all development organizations that are doing capacity building um uh had a number of issues to actually implement our program um that as we were used to so back in those days we we we transferred a lot to virtual trainings and uh in in my in my projects actually we did a number of virtual training courses on isotopodology in this case for the europe and central asia region which haven't been existing before uh and because of that external factor covid uh we are continuing to do these courses as an introductory course uh to uh basically uh introduce the topic to some researchers it's not meant to be um replacing the actual hands on it's not even uh it's not meant to and it's not possible to replace the hands on long term uh in-person training but it can be a nice complementary feature uh um if you um uh to the existing capacity building suite or tools that we may have so as i'm listening to what we're talking about and i think it's just really coming out with what you're talking about now with the virtual training um one of the the the points of this particular session was to talk about capacity development in the Sahil and the particular challenges that it faces and we've talked about actually a wide range of issues um had a bit of one of those circular types of conversations that move from one topic to another but which of these issues are particular to the Sahil what is it every region has that's particular that specific issue those um those problems that are inherent to to that region what is it about the Sahil do you think that is particularly challenging and based on what you've just said now one of the things is obviously the ability to develop to deliver virtual training courses because there's a there's obviously that connectivity issue but what are the other issues that are perhaps particular to the Sahil that collectively i mean we have the IAEA we have the WMO we have UNEP represented here where are the areas that we maybe need to focus i don't it's Stefan whether you maybe want to comment on that with particular focus on isotope hydrology you mean or i think maybe yeah i think capacity in general yeah i i have to admit that i'm not the expert for that region but but i believe it's it's a combination of uh you know really least developed countries like Mali and Niger and some others and others are maybe a bit further on the development scale but also still lower middle income so i know what comes with it that in general there's always a huge lack of capacity building but also they even in my home country you know you have a lack of capacity when it comes to understanding the importance of isotope hydrology so if even some basic parameters for for closing a water balance are not already collected no then then more advanced nuclear techniques are of course and not the highest priority in many countries because people also underestimate and don't even know what you can learn with taking regular samples you know you to some extent you big word now cover up for for the lack of monitoring for the last decades you know because you you get a some insights about the passage you're not redeveloping time series but but you at least to get an understanding of systems behavior about interacting of for instance different depths or shallow versus deep of groundwater systems etc which is already very insightful for water management so so the the development scale is one of the things then is of course a language issue but that can be overcome i i believe with with the trainers that you can engage and and some some parts of there's a hell there's also just very serious security issues which um draw the attention to other things than than studying isotope hydrology because just you know human security is is already compromised in many parts as we know so that that does make effects of capacity building efforts even more more difficult i i mean i i think i completely agree with that and and water is um a main factor an important factor in regional security and this is what you really focus on right elizabeth um do you if we could maybe pass the microphone back to elizabeth i i how how can we better leverage technical developments technical capacity to help mitigate these types of issues well i mean like i was giving some examples at the beginning about how technical engagement and assistance can start a conversation towards something more tricky but i think in addition i really agree with what stefan's saying about the context of the sale is a low development base like it's important to remember i work in the horn now they're very much miles apart you know in terms of the the baseline of development having said and the insecurity and the political instability that comes with that which we see in the region is challenging because then your ability for technical expertise to to be you know incorporated into policy or for that policy to be implemented is quite limited under these transitional you know unstable situations we see in the sahel however i mean what's particular to the sahel you are asking is my experience is that there are excellent technical institutions and universities in bachina fasso in mali in senegal and you know depending how you in yuzhe that are ready to you know absorb such training and you know capacity development that you're talking about and i think there's there's many reasons in my work on peace and security where we look to the sahel because regional approaches are very they're very conducive for regional approaches to problems which other regions are not the context for cooperation you know is quite historical it's it's all countries want to work together as a regional block for the reasons we've just mentioned that that they're you know fighting for resources and attention a lot of the time very good at integrating across different sectors so you know what whether it's water management but also the question you were asking about how that intersects with industry and agriculture very you know there are mechanisms for doing that in that region and we look to it really it's for arranging the governance around those things we look to that region from the horn to see how we can model those kinds of governance or institutional solutions but you know there is a challenge i know from some of my former colleagues in the universities to now advance scientifically with the instability and insecurity that's really i mean you can't underestimate in the the five sahel countries is is really increasing so i'm not sure that there's a solution to that problem that's technological but i think the kind of cooperation at the UN or bilaterally you know partners could give can help very much with making progress under very difficult circumstances yeah i i see where you're coming from i think one of the one of the benefits or a non scientific benefits of the technical development that we do particularly with the regional projects and these new type of projects where we invest in memesy and phd students is building that sense of community amongst the people very early on early on as students getting them in contact with researchers students doing similar things in other countries and building a sense of community working towards common goals and hopefully the the expectation is that those people would flow through down into government and move up through government and maintain those links and that sense of community that's not just a local community but a regional community which i do think that you get within the sahel they have this sense of community within the sahel which i think is a very powerful a very strong component of their identity and and that's something that we can leverage to help build capacity there and one of the things i think we at the agency can do is in the context of a regional project we can look at investing in capacity in regional centers regional areas rather than in in each country and in areas like the sahel which as you are saying are very low development index we don't necessarily want to be working towards investment in every country we we need to be able to spread that capacity and i think that these types of projects that we we are currently working on where we bringing these people together in a regional context we are running regional training courses are really good at doing that stephen if i come back to you adaptation strategies adaptation in the sahel the horn of africa these are important um these are important developments that we need to do to need to bring to those areas in terms of a meteorological perspective or from the wmo's perspective do you have any insights into what are the core adaptation strategies that might be relevant for the sahel that something that we could look at from the ia ea's perspective about incorporating into the the the work that we do thank you am i allowed one more word on the the regional capacity building and i'm not forgetting the capacity excuse me the climate change adaptation question you know in one of my previous jobs we we also did regional training and bringing people together from from trans boundary river basins and yes you you discuss ideological modeling isotope techniques or whatever it sometimes it doesn't matter it matters in terms of what you want to achieve but but one thing which we shouldn't underestimate in these regional approaches and i fully subscribe to what you said is you you bring people together and it's not efficient to to have a little lap somewhere and then people go away they get promoted and then instruments are not maintained and and all these issues so to to concentrate this in regional hubs bring the people there together because they also build up these social bonds you know we we did this in mekong from in for instance with all the lower mekong countries as well as china and then after two years of a postdoctoral training on climate change adaptation it was so normal for them to from the chinese to write emails to the below mekong countries because they they collaborated with them they co-published papers with them and you know they really it's kind of these drinking beard conferences and all that which which really forms a bond and then makes it so much easier to to you know to do your best to exchange of course we have to perform in our in our policy settings but but still you break the eyes and therefore these regional approaches are are very useful in any environmental sciences when your climate change adaptation question when you think about water we are most of us like here as water experts today and if you look at climate change often there's a kind of a a bit of a bad story about water water floods and droughts they become more frequent and more severe and people drawn and infrastructures washed away and it's all kind of bad and it gets worse for climate change that is true but we have been saying that for how many years now and and were we able to really change the dialogue on that not not really huh so i wonder if if we kind of enter into that was a bit more positive spin from water is a problem of climate change and water is part of the solution to climate change and earlier this week the water and climate leaders which we a group that we facilitated at WMO and my group they published a statement for the COP and it's kind of really it's a and they call that a change of the narrative on water and climate change or an imperative on that and and it's really a much more positive side so if you invest in water it really can make a great interest a great impact on climate change adaptation you can avoid tremendous cost i spoke about earlier warning earlier today and the global what is it called the commission on global adaptation or what forgot the exact name that the guys in in order to them they made a ranking and and and kind of one of the best adaptation investments you can do is early warning systems they said so they they have these multipliers every dollar you put in pays back with the power with ten times so i'm not so sure about these multipliers of how true they are or sound but it definitely shows that investments in early warning can really pay back to society big scale or investments in water management to make society more resilient you know you create jobs through nature-based solutions you can help capturing carbon in the soil through certain water management with combined irrigation rainwater harvesting and whatever so there's a number of techniques which which are part of the solution so it's not only this um this picture climate change and water is a problem is the big problem it's it's kind of what are the water management techniques that we have available to be part of the solution and then in climate change adaptation it's basically water management it's to large extent water management yeah i i think i agree with that um i think there's a there's a lot of people who say that the climate crisis is really a water crisis having enough water of the right quality in the right area in order to do the things that we need to do to grow the crops we need to grow to have water to drink so so understanding how that system is changing and maybe as you say maybe we need to think about that in a more in a more positive sense rather than a negative sense um in the sahil i know the the conversation usually is around having too little water all the time and maybe i can bring up groundwater specifically because groundwater is in the sahil is something that we've been working a lot with looking specifically at where the groundwater is and what its age is to evaluate how sustainable the groundwater supplies are um and we um we the lot of the data that we generate there is very useful um to help people understand or different u n agencies understand where um where water is likely to be sustainable and can support development but also um in the sahil where we have moving people moving from one area to the other where we have unstable human settlements um what the impact on the groundwater supplies is going to be Stefan if i i just want to come back to you straight away because one of the adaptation strategies for climate is groundwater right people become more dependent on groundwater um and we use that to support diminishing surface water reserves do you think i know this isn't really a capacity development issue but it's a it's an issue that affects future um future um generations shall we say because do you think that groundwater is a sustainable adaptation strategy one of the things that we work with with isotope hydrology looking at groundwater is how long it's been there and a lot of groundwater systems that are being abstracted now are fossil groundwater systems and a lot of people are concerned about whether we if we are removing all of that groundwater and it doesn't get replaced how does that affect future generations and those future generations may be impacted in ways that are not anticipated right at the moment and that will perfect capacity development in future generations do you have a perspective on the push to use groundwater yeah no no thank you and groundwater but it's the year of groundwater 2022 huh by the way there is a you and water groundwater summit in early december exactly where jody and i i think we're in the same session but that's uh that that was my pr moment um it's certainly part of the solution and understanding the groundwater what type of groundwater is it how is it recharged how sustain what is the abstain no sustainable abstraction rate that we can do in a sustainable way um that is that is absolutely critical to understand so therefore in many regions groundwater can be part of the solution if you look at um previously i worked for a couple of years for imi international water management institute as director of water food and ecosystems and uh that we did some of these global analysis and uh for africa um it's around five percent that it varies regionally a bit what the irrigation source is groundwater it there might be some regions where it's more but overall average on africa it's largely surface water and in many parts of africa you do have groundwater resources that can be utilized if people know where it is um it could be uh just alluvial filling in in riparian rivers it could also be deeper groundwater and and it but really understanding the resource its characteristics it's what is the substantial abstraction rate could really help us and and really ensure um more food security in africa because i also as you said groundwater what do you do with it and and for and from a food security point of view it is irrigation is is a key thing that needs to be further developed as as a water as a climate adaptation technique so therefore groundwater is a huge role to play it's often underestimated yes often the groundwater is not exactly there where we need it and and um there's there's challenges but but it's not that use of surface water without challenges so so it's kind of a better understanding that these interactions between surface water and groundwater better understanding of the the resources and its characteristics and space and time help us to to more sustainable um use them but also groundwater is not the silver bullet as as you already implied in your question it it depends very much on local circumstances all right thank you for that stiffen i i think i'm gonna start to wrap it up now um if i if i take one thing away though and i think that made an impression on me is is the idea of the sense of community um capacity development is about building skills and we don't want those skills to be just in the moment skills we want those skills to last and bring about meaningful change and i think building those relationships and those connections that last a lifetime is a really important way of doing that and i think that science from my perspective and i fully acknowledge that i'm completely biased but i think science is a good way of doing that bringing that community sense of community together um i think that many of the issues that we've talked about now are not necessarily unique to the sahil um some of them are but some of them are general the issues to do with capacity development that we could focus on and i think if we talk about sense of community um also the greater working together and cooperation between our development agencies as well so if i might say Steph and the the work that you're doing we do definitely want to bring more isotope hydrology into it and work with you better on it Elizabeth would love to discuss more the the complexities to do with peace and security and the role that water plays on that and i know that christoph and i will have many discussions going into the future about how we can continue to build capacity development within the programs at the international atomic energy agency so i'd like to say thank you for the three of you for joining me and having this conversation which covered many different components of capacity development both here and now as well at the end they're looking towards the future and i look forward to working with you in the future on water projects thank you thank you thank you very much