Building resilience within water scarce landscapes –storing rainwater to cope with droughts and harness floods for climate smart agriculture

The Near East and North Africa region is a hotspot for climate change impacts – heat waves, uncertain hydrology, often with decreased rainfall and extreme events (e.g., drought, floods, heat waves, etc.). It is also a region suffering with growing water scarcity – more demand than available water resources in many countries or water systems. The need to secure food security is leading many countries to push water allocation to its limits. This is putting water security at risk if no action is taken to curb water allocation particularly to agriculture.

This Technical Session will focus on the opportunities of storage across scales (from in-situ to broader scales). The session will start by looking at climate risks and options for increasing resilience in those watersheds (illustration on 3 watersheds). It will then investigate further the potential for increased in situ water harvesting for rainfed systems for the near East and North Africa region and what can be obtained when working on in-situ water harvesting. Finally, it will discuss the implications of increased water harvesting on water that can be understood using water accounting to double check water fate.

The session will provide the opportunity to present the FAO/ICARDA/OAAD water-harvesting feasability tool and the FAO/World Bank protocol on water accounting.

For Session Flyer, please click here

For more information on Cairo Water Week 16th-19th October 2022, visit the web site.