One of the defining features of the Conference is the prominent role that civil society will play all throughout the process: leading to and during Sirte 2008 Conference.

Recognizing the importance of an enhanced dialogue among the various stakeholders, the Secretariat facilitates the participation of NGOs, civil society organizations and private sector since the early stage of the preparation of the Conference.

A series of consultations ensures wide involvement, and facilitates a broad information and knowledge sharing among all the stakeholders. In particular, the dialogue process starts well before the platform offered by the Conference itself, through the implementation of 5 Regional Workshops aimed at the identification of regional trends in the water use in the agricultural and energy sectors and at the exchange of knowledge and information on a regional scale.

The workshops will involve all the stakeholders, representatives from international organizations and from the civil society, with more emphasis on non-governmental organizations and the private sector. The participants have been identified on the basis of their involvement in the agricultural and energy sectors and have been asked to actively contribute in the workshops through the presentation of sectoral studies (agriculture and energy) and through active discussions which enable a successful dissemination of information and feed into regional/continental synthesis of results to be realized at a later stage of project development.