On
November 21st, the IRTCES Delegation visited the UNESCO Beijing Office for a
discussion and exchange. Mr. Shahbaz Khan, Director of UNESCO Beijing Office and
Director of Multisectoral Regional Office for East Asia, and Ms. Ai Suguira,
Program Officer of Natural Sciences Division, attended the meeting. Prof. Zhang
Jianli, Deputy Director of the IRTCES, and relevant persons in charge of the
Secretariat, the Research and Training Division, the Division of International
Exchange and Information, and the Division of International Cooperation of the IWHR
attended the meeting.

Prof.
Zhang thanked UNESCO for its strong support and assistance to both IWHR and IRTCES.
He introduced the achievements of the IRTCES and the progress of the
preparation of the 40th anniversary series of activities. In recent years,
focusing on the development strategy of UNESCO, it has undertaken a large
number of consulting and service projects in the fields of soil erosion and
sediment management, hosted academic conferences and trainings, and promoted
the distribution of academic journals, data collection and dissemination,
popularization of science as well as capacity building, etc., so as to closely
cooperate with UNESCO.
Director
Shahbaz Khan congratulated the achievements of IWHR and IRTCES in water-related
international cooperation, made suggestions on the positioning and development
of IRTCES, expressed his full support for the preparatory work related to the 40th
anniversary series of activities, and looked forward to IWHR and IRTCES to play
a leading role in the development of UNESCO'sIntergovernmental Hydrological
Programme (IHP).
Ms.
Ai Sugiura introduced the overall operation of UNESCO category II water-related
centers, congratulated IRTCES on its fruitful achievements, and hoped that
communication and cooperation would be further strengthened under the framework
of UNESCO's medium- and long-term strategic priorities.
Prof.
Liu Cheng introduced the case studies, education and capacity building carried
out by the International Sediment Initiative (ISI), the flagship programme of
the Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP), as well as the latest
progress made under the framework and strategic update of the flagship
programme of the ninth phase of the IHP.
Prof.
Du Pengfei introduced the progress and next step plan of the global soil
erosion and river sediment data collection from the perspectives, data source,
data processing and data display.
Dr.
Meng Yuan introduced the cooperation of IWHR with UNESCO in the field of youth
water science education. Taking the multilingual publication of Water Knowledge
Reader as an opportunity, a series of activities have been carried out to bring
high-quality water science popularization education resources to more than 50
teachers and 200 primary school students in Kenya, Cambodia and other countries.
Both
sides had in-depth exchanges on the strategic position of IHP Phase IX, the
role played by ISI, open science and open data, data collection and publication
channels, water science education outreach and preparation for the series of
activities for the IRTCES 40th anniversary.