Danube Water Conference 2023 was a Great Success Story: Significant Delegation of Albanian Officials Attended and Actively Involved in the Program

Danube Water Conference 2023 was a Great Success Story: Significant Delegation of Albanian Officials Attended and Actively Involved in the Program

The 2023 Danube Water Conference was held on 31 May to 02 June 2023, in Vienna, Austria, organized by the Danube Water Program, run by the International Association of Water Companies in the Danube River Catchment Area, IAWD and the World Bank, and co-funded by the Austrian Government. The DWC this year coincided with two anniversaries, the 10^th anniversary of the Danube Water Program and the 30^th anniversary of the IAWD.

The theme of the Conference for this year was “Navigating Changing Waters: New ways to overcome emerging challenges of the water sector in the Danube region”.  The conference brought together more than 180 young and senior water sector professionals from more than 23 countries who discussed on existing and emerging challenges of the region’s water sector with sessions exploring best practice examples how to manage them and interactive discussions identifying new ways to overcome them.

The Conference was attended by several stakeholder representatives from Albania, representing several water utilities, private companies members of SHUKALB, the National Water Supply, Sewerage and Waste Infrastructure Agency (AKUM) and the Water Regulatory Authority (WRA), as well as SHUKALB itself.

Among the Albanian speakers part of the conference program were Mr. Flauers Shoshi, Deputy Director, AKUM, who was a speaker at the session “The wider perspective: Building a water secure sector in the face of the climate emergency”, with the presentation “Water security diagnosticsfor the Danube region, Albanian case”; Ms. Evis Gjebrea, Deputy General Director of Tirana Water Supply and Sewerage Company, who was speaker at the session “Hidden figures: Attract and retain a diverse and engaged workforce” with the presentation titled “Recognizing and addressing the workforce issues: the perspective of a water utility”, and Ms. Elsa Belba, Engineer, AKUM who had he role of the co-moderator at the session “Hidden figures: Attract and retain a diverse and engaged workforce”.

The conference program addressed a diversity of themes from economic challenges, water security in the face of climate change, perspectives for HR in aging societies, and communication within the sector and beyond, creating enough room for lively exchanges of ideas and opinions. In addition, as part of the program, Camilo Lombana from WB presented and launched the WB Center of Excellence (CoE) which will be located in Tirana, Albania, and 50 utilities from Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia will be invited to join the program in the CoE’s pioneering phase.