FAO discusses water accounting and auditing in practice at the fourth Cairo Water Week

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with the International Water Management Institute, IHE-Delft, The World Bank, the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI), and EU Water STARS project, have implemented a session at the fourth Cairo Water Week under the title Water Accounting and Auditing in Practice: sharing lessons and proposing a protocol informing sustainable water use.

In a context of growing water scarcity, any water allocation requires first a careful review of the status and trends of resources and demands. When all available water is allocated, new water demands will require difficult decisions. Water accounting is a critical approach to inform such decision setting the information basis to achieve safe and sustainable water use in the NENA region. 

During the session, FAO and its partners collaborated to make water accounting a practical tool for strategic planning of scarce water resources. This collaboration is effective in the Near East and North Africa region under the Water Efficiency, Productivity and Sustainability project (WEPS-NENA) under the Near East and North Africa Water scarcity initiative. In Egypt, MWRI set a water accounting unit institutionalizing and operationalizing water accounting supported by EU Water STARS project, and the WEPS-NENA project. FAO and the World Bank join forces with key organizations/experts working on water accounting &auditing such as IWMI and IHE Delft to prepare a protocol to support the practical use of water accounting. 

One hundred and forty participants attended the hybrid session, which aimed to present learnings from practical experiences across the NENA region on implementing water accounting and auditing and reflected on the content of a protocol/guidelines on water accounting to facilitate implementation of water accounting. The session included interactive discussions between water accounting experts that discussed the value and challenges faced while implementing WA&A in their countries, as well as looking ahead with what is next and what they would like to accomplish. 

This session was implemented under the regional project “Implementing the 2030 Agenda or water efficiency/productivity and water sustainability in NENA countries”, under the Water Scarcity Initiative. This project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

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