Launch of the Regional Water Scarcity Initiative (WSI) Programme
Dubai (United Arab Emirates), 05/12/2023
Date: Tuesday, 5 December 2023
Time: 18:00 (Dubai Time)
Place: Food and Agriculture Pavilion – COP-28 (Thematic Arena 2, Expo City, Dubai)
Background
Water is a foundational component of agrifood systems, yet it is the number one limiting factor for agriculture in the Near East and North Africa region. The region is currently facing increased challenges that undermine regional efforts toward achieving Sustainable Development Goals (i.e., water scarcity and climate variability, extreme events, and water pollution and quality deterioration). The recent FAO State of the Land and Water Report for the Near East and North Africa illustrates that freshwater availability per capita declined in the region by more than 75 percent between 1960 and 2018. It also emphasizes the need to strengthen the resilience of agricultural production systems by promoting efficient water management to optimize the use of limited water resources and reduce the pressure on fragile water systems that are nearly at breaking point, threatening food security, rural livelihoods and sustainable development.
To ensure the efficient management of limited water resources, it is essential to develop a thorough comprehension and application of the key concepts of productivity, efficiency and sustainability to properly assess actual water use and potential water savings within integrated water resources management. It also necessitates enhancing the enabling environment for developing and operationalizing cross-sector policies and approaches in practice.
The Regional Water Scarcity Initiative (WSI) was established by FAO and launched in 2013 with the objective of creating a "Partnership Platform" to enhance Coordination and Collaboration among various stakeholders in the pursuit of water security and food security. Working on issues that include, but not limited to, water accounting, irrigation efficiency and productivity, governance and cross-sector policy coherence, non-conventional water use, water-energy-food nexus, and data deficiency, the WSI aims to build critical mass of expertise, knowledge and tools that allows countries of the region face the challenge towards sustainable development.
The WSI programme, designed and coordinated by FAO, has been collectively developed and will be implemented jointly with five international core partners, namely, ESCWA, ICARDA, ICBA, IWMI and UNICEF. The programme development was also coordinated with the regional intergovernmental processes on water and agriculture within the League of Arab States to address common challenges facing countries of the region, thus targeting both national and regional levels. The focus on the national level aims to examine potential approaches for enhanced water planning, productivity, and management at pilot or catchment scale, thus providing evidence for upscaling nationally while at the same time informing policy development across sectors at both national and regional levels. At the regional level, opportunities for cross country exchange of national achievements will be identified and utilized. While the proposed programme targets the whole region, field activities will be implemented in multiple countries, dictated by their geographical, socioeconomic, environmental, and political settings.
Launch Event
This event aims to launch the FAO-led WSI programme as a multi-partner programme realizing the “Partnership Pledge” that was signed by 17 partner organizations working on water in the region during the launch of the WSI back in 2013. In the pledge, partners declared their “strong interest and willingness to work together, drawing on their collective knowledge and resources, in an effective, action-oriented and result-based regional partnership, to support the implementation of relevant collaborative strategies”. This extensive WSI programme brings besides FAO, five partner organizations, namely ESCWA, ICARDA, ICBA, IWMI and UNICEF, to collaborate in achieving its objectives, outcomes and outputs through coordinated implementation of its activities.
Considering that this inclusive and integrated programme necessitates alternative funding modalities that allows for the support from multiple donors, both the Government of Sweden and the Government of the Netherlands have decided to continue their generous support to the water sector in the region by jointly contributing to the multi-donor trust fund set up by FAO to lead the implementation of the WSI programme. In addition to supporting this programme, they are among the leading donors to support countries of the region face development related challenges, among which water security and food security are high in the list of national priorities.