MINIMAX Competition: Solutions for Managing Water and Climate Extremes
MINIMAX Competition: Solutions for Managing Water and Climate Extremes
The MINIMAX Competition aims to collect and identify innovative water and climate solutions that MINIMISE the negative impacts of hydroclimatic extremes and MAXIMISE social, economic, and environmental benefits. Submissions closed.
The Global Water Partnership (GWP), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and the Water and Climate Coalition have teamed up to organise this new competition which aims to collect and identify practical and innovative water and climate solutions contribution to drought, flood and water resources management. Rather than focusing on technological and scientific approaches, these solutions should clearly highlight how they contribute to building climate resilience and improving water governance more broadly. The Competition will be officially launched at a Special Session on March 24th at World Water Forum 2022.
Goals of the competition
- Inspire action by providing practical and innovative insights on overcoming challenges that motivates actors to develop new water and climate solutions.
- Build bridges between the water and climate communities and demonstrating how water action can lead to fostering climate adaptation and mitigation.
- Accelerate change through scaling up and replicating innovative solutions by strengthening collaboration between stakeholders from various sectors and working at different levels.
At the Special Session of the World Water Forum, the participants were invited to discuss and selected the four priority areas for the MINIMAX Competition submitters. All submissions will have to be anchored into one of those four selected areas. Participants at the Special Session will be able to vote on the following list of themes:
- Enhancing water and climate finance
- Developing climate smart water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)
- Empowering and engaging youth meaningfully
- Leveraging water data and information
There will be four Minimax Competition winners, one for each of the key priority areas. The four winners will be invited to present their MINIMAX Solution at a on-site session during the Stockholm World Water Week in August 2022. The Prize includes travel, accommodation, and the registration fee to the World Water Week in Stockholm.
Selected MINIMAX Stories will be featured on the GWP ToolBox: IWRM ActionHub, the IDMP, and APFM websites. MINIMAX Story submitters will also benefit from networking events and workshops organised as part of the Water and Climate Coalition’s Activity Market Place.
The competition is open to any initiative or project contributing to improving flood and/or drought management. We encourage submissions from various sectors and stakeholder groups (governments, NGOs, local communities, international organisations) working across scales. MINIMAX Solutions with strong social inclusion dimension, such as those coming from youth- and women-led initiatives, are particularly encouraged to apply.
Interested initiatives can submit their MINIMAX Solutions via the Submission button. Interested submitters will first need to register themselves and create a user account on the GWP Toolbox platform. The submission form consists of 4 major sections: (1) Background, (2) Actions Taken, (3) Results and Outcomes, and (4) Lessons Learned. Guiding questions for each section are provided directly in the submission form. Submitters are also encouraged to upload media content and links to their websites.
Submissions will be accepted in English, French, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish.
Submissions will be quality checked and evaluated by an expert panel from GWP, WMO, and the Water and Climate Coalition before being published. Only fully complete and quality checked submissions will compete for the prize. The evaluation criteria include: (1) relevance to the key priority themes, (2) contribution to climate adaptation and mitigation, (3) potential for scalability, (4) multi-stakeholder participation and inclusion.
The competition was launched on 24 March 2022 and submissions are accepted from that date until 12 June 2022. The winners will be announced on 1 July 2022 in a global virtual event. The winners will be invited to present their MINIMAX Solutions at the World Water Week in August 2022.