The Conference "Drought and Water Deficiency: From Research to Policy Making" was organised in Cyprus on May 12th and 13th 2005. Under this broad title regarding Water Management in Deficient Regions, the Conference themes include:
This was the fourth major event in a series of escalating magnitude and importance. The seminal event was organised in Paris in October 2003, within the framework of the EC DG Research Project "Developing Strategies for Regulating and Managing Water Resources and Demand in Water Deficient Regions" (WaterStrategyMan), which incorporated both a Public Workshop on "Comprehensive Water Management Strategies for Water Stressed Regions", and an ARID Cluster Meeting. The decision was taken that subsequently to the success of the Public Workshop, further Workshops and Conferences would be undertaken by the Cluster, in order to address the water scarcity issue and promote the presentation and dissemination of the Cluster results. Furthermore, the planned events would contribute to developing the interaction between the three individual Projects (Aquadapt, Medis and WaterStrategyMan) and promoting the sharing of results and methodologies within the Cluster and with the general public.
The three events planned subsequent to the Paris Workshop were aimed at presenting the research outcomes of the three Projects towards the development of integrated water resources management strategies to the public in a series of successive steps. The initial event "Water resources management in water stressed environments and islands: The challenge of ecoadaptation", organised in La Palma of the Canary Islands in February 2004, involved the identification and analysis of traditional and new instruments that are or can be used for the management of water resources in Arid Regions.