To celebrate World Water Day, encourage water saving across the island, and build bridges to a peaceful and more prosperous future, leaders from both sides of the island came together on March 22, 2011, in the center of divided Nicosia to inaugurate a Water-Saving Exhibition. Organized by a consortium of local NGOs, the Exhibition is a confidence building measure supported by the UN-supported Technical Committee on the Environment and supported in part by funding through USAID. After making brief remarks, Eleni Mavrou, Cemal Bulutoğluları, George Iacovou, Kudret Ozersay, U.S. Ambassador Frank C. Urbancic Jr., and UN Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Cyprus Alexander Downer toured the Exhibit which is being hosted in a building along the Ledra/Lokmaci Street crossing. The Exhibit will remain at the crossing through March 25, 2011, and will then tour the island to raise awareness about the many water management challenges faced in Cyprus and cutting-edge methods that can be used to address them.

Launched by the Technical Committee on Environment, one of the seven committees set up by the two communities in March 2008 to foster bi-communal projects on a range of issues, the Exhibit is part of the project on "Awareness Raising Measures for Water Saving". It is being implemented by the AKTI Project and Research Centre and the Turkish Cypriot Chamber of Environmental Engineers, in co-operation with the Cyprus Environmental Stakeholder Forum and the Regional Network for Sustainable Future. Support for the project has been made available by the USAID-funded UNDP Action for Cooperation and Trust program. World Water Day has been observed internationally since 1993 as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. The event in Cyprus' capital city was fitting given the theme of World Water Day 2011, "Water for Cities".