The Italian Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea organized the International Summit "Water and Climate: Meeting of the Great Rivers of the World" from 23 to 25 October 2017 in Rome, Italy.

The international summit was organized in partnership with UNECE, the International Network of Basin Organizations (INBO, Secretariat of the Global Alliances for Water and Climate GAfWaC) and Aquamadre.  It took place in the historic and prestigious Campidoglio of Rome
The Italian Prime Minister, H.E. Paolo Gentiloni, opened the Summit in the morning of Monday 23rd of October. The closing ceremony, on 25 October, was celebrated in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic, H.E Sergio Mattarella.

The event was designed as a milestone in the preparation of the twenty-third Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP23, Bonn, 6-17 November 2017) and of the eighth World Water Forum (Brasilia, 18-23 March 2018). The summit promoted further integration of water as one of the priority issues of international negotiations on climate change. It enabled experience sharing between great river basin organizations, local, national and regional administrations in charge of climate change adaptation policies and water resources management, bilateral and multilateral donors and other institutions interested in adaptation to climate change and basin management.

The summit was part of the programme of work of the Water Convention, drawing on its extensive and long-lasting work on climate change adaptation in transboundary basins carried out under the Convention’s Task Force on Water and Climate.

For further information on the outcomes please see: http://www.minambiente.it/water-and-climate-summit.