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World Irrigation ForumTheme & Sub-themesNewsletter

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Second World Irrigation ForumThe 2nd World Irrigation Forum (WIF2) will be hosted in Chiang Mai city, by the Thai National Committee on Irrigation and Drainage (THAICID) in November 2016. Chiang Mai is the centre of irrigated agriculture development in Northern Thailand. This region will provide the ideal setting to take forward the stakeholder engagement initiated at the 1 World Irrigation Forum, Mardin, Turkey, 2013.Chiang Mai is regarded as Thailand’s “Rose of the North” because of its elegant culture, perfect harmony and exquisite art and craftsmanship and offers various types of recreational activities in mountainous areas. It provides an opportunity to serve both educational and recreational objectives. We are certain that the Northern Thai people will give you a warm welcome and hospitality that will be really memorable and long cherished.As one of the leading agricultural based countries, Thailand has been the major rice exporter. It is known as the “kitchen of the world” offering quality food produce for many countries. With more than 110 years of irrigation development, Thailand has the 8th largest irrigated area in the world. Flooding has impeded agriculture development many a times in the past e.g., 1995, 2006, 2010 and 2011. Having foreseen that the world-changing situation will directly result in water-related

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problems. Thailand has created strategic plans emphasizing food security, through continuous agricultural production, environment preservation, water resources development, and involvement of local people in solving water problems.As a founder member of ICID, Thailand has always been playing an important role in water management and has been at the forefront in the world. Chiang Mai has in its credit to successfully organizing the 2 Asia Pacific Water Summit in 2013.Actions roadmap as committed and deliberated at the 7th World Water Forum held in South Korea, in April 2015 which have shown that upgrading, modernisation and expansion of irrigation, drainage and flood management schemes are among the key issues to assure sufficient and sustainable food production for an ever growing and more prosperous World population. For this irrigation and drainage has to play an important role in improving the living conditions, primarily in the rural area, as well as in drought and flood prone areas. Within this framework the Main Theme chosen for WIF2 is: Water management in a changing world: Role of irrigation for sustainable food production.We hope to see you all at Chiang Mai in 2016!

World Irrigation Forum (WIF)The triennial World Irrigation Forum (WIF) aims to bring together all the stakeholders involved in irrigation of multi-disciplines and all scales, including the policy makers, experts, research institutions, non-governmental organizations and farmers. It provide a platform for the world irrigation community and interested development professionals to find solutions to problems plaguing the irrigated agriculture, in time of depleting freshwater resources as a result of global warming and climate change.ICID provides a unique platform for multi-stakeholder in World Irrigation Forum (WIF) for sharing and learning by engaging in issues of interest at global level. WIF also gathers a wide range of experts from various fields to discuss important issues highlighted.The World Irrigation Forum stimulates and promotes multi- disciplinary discussions towards sustainable solution to water management in agriculture through:• Exchange of latest irrigation and drainage policies, practices, innovations and technologies;• Exploring and formulating concrete inter-disciplinary proposals;• Development of liaison/ collaboration among various national / international institutions/ organizations/ private sector working for irrigated agriculture; and• Advocacy for political commitments.

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