On November 3-4, 2009, the WIBIS workshop took place in Mbabane, Swaziland. This workshop was organized within the WIBIS-project, which is a DGIS-Wageningen UR Partnership Programme. The main goal of the WIBIS-project is to support inter-sector and inter-state (transboundary) policy development and sustainable use of the Incomati basin water through building capacity with respect to water valuation and innovative water monitoring.

The Incomati river basin is shared between South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique. In 2002 these three countries signed the “Tripartite Interim Incomati Maputo Agreement” (IIMA). This agreement led to another agreement, the so-called “Progressive Realization of the Inco-Maputo Agreement” (PRIMA). The objective of this PRIMA-programme is to realize the objective and purposes of the IIMA by supporting the parties on the establishment of a long term institutional framework for the implementation of IIMA Treaty and ensuring protection and sustainable utilization of the water resources of the Incomati and Maputo watercourses. The WIBIS-project supports ongoing regional initiatives and projects, such as the PRIMA-programme.

Participants in the WIBIS workshop were representatives of LEI (Petra Hellegers) and Alterra (Herco Jansen) (both Wageningen UR partners), WaterWatch (Wim Bastiaanssen and Steven Wilmink), PRIMA (Issufo Chutumia and Ivo van Haaren), the Dutch Embassies of Pretoria and Maputo, staff of National Water Departments (DWA South Africa, DWA Swaziland, DNA Mozambique) and a number of water boards (ICMA South Africa, CMA Swaziland, ARA-Sul Mozambique, Groot Salland the Netherlands. Trevor Shongwe (DWA Swaziland) acted as chairman during the workshop and did a wonderful job.

On the first day of the workshop, representatives of WaterWatch gave a presentation on their Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land model (SEBAL) and the results of this model for the Incomati catchment. Certain problems of input for the model were also presented and discussed. Representatives of LEI and Alterra then presented a tool that has been developed from the WaterWatch results. This tool is an open-source web application with which the user can evaluate the implications of land use scenarios. The workshop was mainly intended to be interactive and to discuss the further process regarding this tool. On the second day of the workshop the focus was on water quality, monitoring and control. Speakers of PRIMA and the water boards gave presentations on this topic.