The G-WADI Global Conference “G-WADI more than a decade enhancing water and sustainable development for arid regions” was held at Foreign Experts Building Beijing in Beijing (China) from 25 to 27 October 2016. The event was organized by UNESCO, the National Natural Science Foundation in China, the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute (CAREERI), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Peking University and the South University of Science and Technology of China.

This Global Conference serves as a commemorative event for the global G-WADI network, highlighting more than 10 years’ achievements and focusing on the preparation of new directions and priorities for the coming years. It focuses on a discussion to finalize new strategic vision for G-WADI. The event was also an opportunity to address methodological issues and challenges for building resilience in arid lands and river basins by enhancing interlinkages and synergies among G-WADI regional networks, IHP Programmes and Water related Category 2 Centres.

Prof. Liu Cheng, as a representative of IRTCES and ISI, attended the conference. He participated in the session "Interlinkages among IHP programmes” as a panelist to present the view of the International Sediment Initiative (ISI) in the session “Interlinkages among IHP programmes”, and delivered a presentation entiled “IRTCES, ISI, Database of Sediment and ISI Case Studies”.