Rationale - Detailed information about the Award
What is behind the award – Why watershed management?
The word “source” denotes origin and purity; it projects dynamism and even mystical power. All water stems from a source: this is where rivers and steams begin their life before embarking on the most diverse of journeys. As the Chinese saying goes: “All water has a source and every tree a root”.
Access to water supply and sanitation is a fundamental human need. Human beings and nature need it for their very survival. But water is a threatened resource. Modern risk research is clear on one point: in the future, water will gain pivotal importance as an issue affecting society, ecology and economics.
Strong leadership and community involvement is essential in preserving and nurturing our water (re)sources at local level. But there are a number of obstacles to overcome before a project of this kind can get off the ground. Swiss Re established the International ReSource Award for Sustainable Watershed Management in an attempt to actively support the planning, evaluation and implementation of water-related projects. This award is a Sharing Solutions initiative by Swiss Re.
Why is Swiss Re interested in the topic of water?
Swiss Re fosters an open and constructive stakeholder dialogue to develop and promote effective framework conditions and best practices that contrib-ute to manage threatened freshwater sources in a sustainable manner: “Back to the source – or ReSource”.
Goal and modalities of the award
The award is aimed at projects which genuinely seek to contribute to raising awareness of the ecological, social and economic significance of water sources and watersheds in developing and emerging countries (only projects that are implemented in a non-OECD country are being considered). Prefer-ence will be given to those projects which demonstrate innovative preventa-tive measures for protecting water resources, i.e. projects that have a pio-neering character in the local context (cultural, institutional or technological), and involve local community and/or regional institutions. Such projects should be based on transferable concepts and thus enable sustained efforts to be made to protect the quality and availability of (drinking) water in other locations.
Jury
The jury comprises an independent international panel of water and sustain-ability experts from NGOs and governmental institutions as well as some ex-perts from Swiss Re. The decisions of the jury are final. Any recourse to le-gal action is hereby explicitly excluded. We will not enter into any correspon-dence on such matters. Swiss law shall apply.
Download: 
Jury Members 2009
Patrons
The award’s valuable contribution to watershed management is recognised and supported by an international panel of patrons. The role of these per-sonalities, who have kindly agreed to mobilise their worldwide networks for the benefit of this project, is to promote the project to as broad a range of in-terested parties as possible.
Download: Patrons 2008
