Water Accounting in Use webinars | 2021
Summary of Water Accounting Webinar Series 2021: “Implementing the 2030 Agenda for water efficiency/productivity and water sustainability in NENA countries”
This Webinar Series 2021 is provided as part of the learning activities of the WEPS-NENA project”. In 2021, the water accounting webinars are organized when the project team finds interesting and useful topics for the water accounting teams in project countries. The target participants are those who produce, analyze, and interpret water accounting outputs. In addition, some of the webinars are useful for decision makers in the field of water resources management and agriculture. Though the contents are designed for stakeholders of the above-mentioned project, this training is open to the public and free of charge for anyone who are interested in the topics. The learning goals of this series are to earn Methods/tools/analyses that may be used in different water accounting tools at various geographic scales. Different examples of water accounting applications from different countries and regions are provided.
Two streams of webinars are organized:
- on Water Auditing (water governance assessment) and Water Tenure – lead by the Knowat Project and details are available here;
- on Water Accounting in Use (see below).
Webinar 3 Summary: Water Balance of the Macta Basin (North-West Algeria): Water Accounting Approach and Basin Closure Issues
In this webinar, Dr. Nabil Kherbache from University of Bejaia introduces the water profile of Algeria by explaining how climate change is affecting the water resources available especially in the Macta basin and briefly points out the actions Algeria is taking to conserve water in the basin. The study area is presented alongside data gathering methodology to calculate water balance of the basin. The results of the inflow and outflow balances were provided and have shown that inflow in the dams have been reduced 40-45% since 1970. The outcomes also yielded that the decrease in inflows can be attributed to the lowering of the water table upstream due to overexploitation, hence the decrease in the base flows of the wadis. Furthermore, the results show that the basin is fully closed and the water depleted fraction is estimated at 143 %. It was highlighted that the multi-level governance deficit (information gap) needs to be addressed to ensure applicability of water accounting standards.
Webinar 2 Summary: Water Accounting at the Farm level and Irrigation Water Metering
In this webinar, Dr. Amgad Elmahdi and Nafn Amdar from IWMI presents the concept of water accounting by defining it, explaining its purpose, its elements & a list of the most important policy questions that are asked. An explanation on what is on farm water accounting is given as well the reasons for its use. Moreover the anticipated outcomes to water resource managers, farmers, governments and the private sector are outlined. An example of applying on farm water accounting in Jordan is shown with the necessary steps in the system description that includes the metering procedure, data collection & archiving, data analysis using water savings equation, and monthly reporting of water application savings, average water application per crop type, and problem detection. Finally, the lessons learned from the Jordan experience was highlighted. Overall, it was concluded that Farm level water accounting is a simple, affordable and useful tool that provides an indirect and farmer-friendly approach to influence more efficient water use in irrigation. It also provides unique data to inform decision making on policies related to water use efficiencies, water abstractions and energy use caps, thus influencing sustainable and positive irrigation behavior change. It also observes and enhances water productivity at the farm and basin scale and contributes to sustaining farmer communities livelihoods and support food security.
Webinar 1 Summary: Water Accounting + using WaPOR data. Case study: Nile River Basin
In this webinar, Solomon Seyoum, Bich Tran and Marloes Mul from IHE Delft presented the profile of the Nile Basin area is first provided which includes the water security challenges. This was followed by a presentation of the results of a Rapid Water Accounting + cycle of the Nile basin that includes the results of the annual precipitation (P), actual evapotranspiration (ET), Mean P-ET, Land Cover Classification, P & ET per land cover. Preliminary assessments from WaPOR data was shown where ETa from major lakes was compared with results from NBI report. Outcome was that Lake ETa was significantly underestimated in the NBI report where WaPOR ETa was found to be 12-14% higher. GRACE data for water storage was presented where long term trend in storage change was positive. WA+ land use categories was also given with the majority of the land being utilized 75% while the rest being modified managed and protected. Overall, the WA+ results yielded that evapotranspiration (ETa) is greater than the precipitation (P) between 2018-2019, even with a very small proportion (0.23%) of outflow from the average gross inflow to the basin, part of the consumption is supplied by depleting water from the storage in the basin, ETa far exceeds Pin water bodies in the Sudan and Egypt in the Sudd wetlands, in Aswan reservoir and irrigated farmlands along the banks of the river in Egypt. Finally, P exceeds ETa in the Ethiopian highlands and the Equatorial Plato.