Since September 2020, the Freshwater Monitor has been engaged as a development advisor by the Geneva Water Hub to contribute to the next development phase of The Water Diplomat.
One year before this, in August 2019, The Geneva Water Hub and OOSKANews entered into a partnership to produce a free monthly intelligence source on hydrodiplomacy and water management. Known as The Water Diplomat, this monthly online publication distributed by email contributes to public awareness raising on the intersects among water, peace, conflict and diplomacy. In its first 17 months, The Water Diplomat created and produced 820 news articles covering different aspects of current affairs, and hydrodiplomacy related to water, peace and conflict. It has grown a base of subscribers from all over the world, developing a reputation for producing current, informative news articles, organised into a format reflecting the chapters of the Global High-level Panel on Water and Peace’s report “A Matter of Survival”. Furthermore, within GWH’s Global Observatory for Water and Peace (GOWP), The Water Diplomat is a node which contributes to the analytical and knowledge sharing capabilities of the Observatory. Over the course of the coming months, and in the run-up to the next World Water Forum in Dakar in March, 2022, The Water Diplomat seeks to consolidate achievements and to further develop the media platform to reach new audiences and promote the water / conflict / peace nexus in international discourse.
The development plan elaborated by Tobias Schmitz on behalf of OOSKANews and the Geneva Water Hub includes a number of initiatives such as:
- Closer engagement and alignment with actors engaged in the Sustainable Development Goals, Peacebuilding and Humanitarian assistance;
- Strengthened outreach to new readers, in particular to include production of the existing news service in languages other than English;
- Promoting and amplifying “local voices “, addressing local hydrodiplomatic challenges and highlighting local initiatives;
- Creative deployment of media methodologies beyond a monthly written publication;
- A platform for “expert” viewpoints on hydrodiplomatic challenges and their remedies, providing accessible insights into sometimes complex geographical and sectoral dynamics;
- Further anchoring The Water Diplomat as a specialist “news agency” to encourage more and better coverage of hydrodiplomacy in “mainstream” media globally;
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