Water, fundamental for food security in North Africa, Near East

NaijaAgroNet:

Access to water is a fundamental need for food security, human health and agriculture, and its looming scarcity in the North Africa and Middle East region, reports NaijaAgroNet.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said in Cairo, that this is a huge challenge requiring an "urgent and massive response."

Accessible fresh water in the region, he said, has fallen by two-thirds in the past 40 years.

“It now amounts to 10 times less per capita availability than the worldwide average, underscoring the need for a significant overhaul of farming systems, he said.

NaijaAgroNet gathered that a recent study by FAO showed that higher temperatures may shorten growing seasons in the region by 18 days and reduce agricultural yields a further 27 per cent to 55 per cent less by the end of this century.

The rising sea level in the Nile Delta, FAO said, is exposing Egypt to the danger of losing substantial parts of the most productive agriculture land due to salinization.

"Competition between water-usage sectors will only intensify in the future between agriculture, energy, industrial production and household needs," he said.

Graziano da Silva attended a high-level meeting covering FAO's collaboration with Egypt on the ‘1.5 million feddan initiative', the government's plan to reclaim eventually up to two million hectares of desert land for agricultural and other uses.

He expressed his strong support to the Egyptian Authorities and committed to back programmes aiming at addressing water scarcity and promoting climate resilient agriculture.

The Director-General's visit to Egypt included meetings with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Land Reclamation, Investment and International Cooperation, as well as the Secretary General of the League of Arab States.

Isaac Oyimah/GEE

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Investing in science can reduce water risks – study

Recent study on water-related project has revealed that investment in science could help to reduce risks associated with water resources.

The study was conducted by the largest public funder of projects to improve the global environment and promote sustainable development, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with the partnership of the United Nations University and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP).

About 200 major international water-related projects over the past two decades were studied which gave room for the identification of existing as well as emerging challenges and how science could offer solutions.
A press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet revealed that the study extracted lessons from a portfolio of major transboundary water projects involving investments of more than US$7 billion, about N1,1 billion.

It is also revealed that river basins in particular are set to experience growing pressures as a result of urbanization, rising water scarcity and poor water quality.

GEF warns that the linkage between science and policymaking needs strengthening, and that the consequences of poor decision-making are dire leading to water-bankruptcy in some regions in the world with their adverse effects on food and energy security.

The study showed a significant drop in the level of dissolved oxygen levels in marine areas which is a critical ecological indicator. A major increase of stored heat in oceans was also highlighted in the report.

The director, United Nations University International Network on Water, Environment and Health, Zafar Adeel said the study underscores how often early 'alarm bells' with respect to emerging issues can be heard and must be heeded.

"The report offers helpful recommendations to the GEF to foster this process," he said.
Also commenting, the GEF's International Waters Focal Area Coordinator, Ivan Zavadsky said that over 20 years GEF has catalyzed the largest investment of its kind in human history.

“GEF's $1.3 billion catalyzed a total of $7 billion of investment in managing shared waters - fresh and marine - in almost every part of the planet, above and below its surface," Ivan said.

"World leaders agreed at the Rio+20 summit in June to strengthen the science-policy interface and to foster international research collaboration on sustainable development. This is especially important in respect to water resources at a point in time of unprecedented pressures from climate change and urbanization to pollution and over extraction," said UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

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