In this issue of the NR Newsletter, we welcome 2012 as the UN-declared International Year of Energy for All, an opportunity to concentrate global attention on the challenges facing both developed and developing countries when addressing access to and efficient use of sustainable energy sources. We also take a look at an interesting land tenure project that aims to bring advanced technology land registration systems to developing countries, through low-cost open-source software. And finally, we review lessons learned and major achievements of a successful transboundary water management project in the Nile Basin.

Since 1996, FAO and the Government of Italy have been collaborating on an ambitious project along the basin of the world’s longest river. The “Information products for the Nile Basin Water Resource Management” was the sum total of three consecutive projects carried out with ten countries in the Nile Basin. In October 2011, the project officially concluded and was handed over to the Nile Basin Initiative, an intergovernmental organization created in 1999 and headquartered in Entebbe, Uganda. A video about the successes and lessons learned during the Nile basin project is also available on-line.

A video about the successes and lessons learned during the Nile basin project is available on-line. The twelve-minute video includes interviews about this important transboundary water project with Minister Plenipotentiary Pier Francesco Zazo, Chief UTC, Directorate General for Development Cooperation, Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Wael Khairy, Executive Director of the Nile Basin Initiative Secretariat, Alexander Müller, Assistant Director-General of FAO’s Natural Resources Management and Environment Department and Pasquale Steduto, Deputy Director of FAO’s Land and Water Division.