Seuls les principaux résultats sont présentés dans le tableau ci-dessous. De nombreuses autres activités sont en cours au niveau des pays.

Findings from Water Accounting in Moqatta’:

There are water that is imported from Mekorot for municipal water supply. A part of the municipal wastewater water, either treated or untreated, is flowing to Israel crossing the green line and causing charge to Palestine for wastewater treatment. There is an opportunity to use such wastewater by reusing it for agriculture, although it requires a cost-benefit analysis, stakeholder engagement to maximize the wastewater reuse, and impact assessment in relation to change of access to water among various stakeholders.    

It is highly possible that some communities are not receiving sufficient household water supply, at least in Jenin area. The limiting factor on quantifying the deficit is the unknown rate of non-revenue water. As the technology is developing in flow metering, it may become possible in near-future that leak detection and reduction may become more feasible, leaving opportunities for investment.   

It seems monitoring of agricultural water consumption by traditional method (using irrigated areas based on agricultural statistics and using crop water requirement as surrogate for crop water consumption) may not work well. Use of remote sensing (RS) for both crop mapping to capture the irrigated area (in contrast with the statistics) and for evapotranspiration (in contrast with use of crop water requirements) may become a more suitable approach. However, RS products require calibration and validation data collected on the ground. Investment is needed on capacity to use RS appropriately.

Findings from the Water Productivity Farmer Survey and Baseline Study:

Farmers' Survey

A semi-structured survey was conducted on a sample of 35 farmers. A wide diversity of crops, from horticultural (cucumber and potato) to forage crops and olive trees was found, with the majority of farmers being reluctant to change crops on the basis of changes in market demands and/or water availability. The individually irrigated surveyed plots were between 0,3 and 0,7 ha on average, and were mostly drip irrigated. Regarding irrigation management, 83% of the farmers reported low uniformity of applied water due to emitter blockage, changes in topography or low pressure. The lack of water metering devices in 60% of the farms made it difficult to control the level of applied water. Around half of the farms have developed facilities for water storage such as ponds or tanks, which give them better water control and flexibility. There is ample variations in agronomic practices such as planting dates and density, but they were well adapted to local conditions, mineral fertilization rates were in line with intensive horticultural practices, but not used in olive production where only manure is commonly applied. Among the problems and risks faced, the majority (62%) perceived the decline in groundwater levels as their principal problem, and saw a combination of modern irrigation technology and advanced training for its use as the solution to this problem.

Baseline study

Palestine conducted an excellent study on determining the baseline of water productivity (in terms of production against water applied) in a large number of crops, both outdoors and under protected cultivation. Biophysical WP was determined, as well as the economic WP, total and for the irrigation water. As expected, there was ample variations in the WP levels for every crop but a tendency was observed in that more recent studies reported higher WP values than older studies, suggesting the progress in the adoption of improved knowledge and technology for the management of crops and water. The values reported are in line with those observed internationally and in the NENA region. It was found that WP values increased as good agricultural practices such as adequate fertilization were adopted, new varieties were introduced and improved water management was disseminated

Water productivity (biophysical or economic production against actual evapotranspiration) recently introduced is a very important concept to be adopted for the determination of the gap between the current and the potential productivity of certain crops. In order, to improve the perception of the farmer on his productivity, he has to be aware on the gap between his current productivity and the potential productivity estimated through certain techniques. Besides the concept and notion of WP still have not been used widely by most of the academic and applied researchers in Palestine and most of the literature has been using irrigation water efficiency as a parameter to evaluate the water in this important sector. The reasons for this are the lack of data to assess the WP and the confusion between different types of aspects and indicators are constraining the adoption of this option.

Farmers Field Schools

It is worthy to mention that Farmers Field Schools FFSs show significant results on crop production, economic return, which indeed, the good agricultural practices that have been gained by the farmers through on job-learning approach improve their capacity and awareness in the context of increasing productivity and narrowing the gap between current and potential.