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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