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The Arab region needs a new generation of policies and investments in agricultural water. Agricultural water management has always posed challenges and opportunities in the Arab world. However, unprecedented and accelerating drivers such as climate change, population growth, and land degradation make agricultural water management a more urgent priority than ever before. In addition, as part of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, Arab countries have committed to work towards an ambitious set of development targets, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Unless the right policies and investments are put in place, it will be difficult to achieve the SDGs, including ending hunger and providing clean water and sanitation for all. This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute to foster dialogue on agricultural water policies and investments in the context of the FAO led Regional Water Scarcity initiative. The purpose of the paper is to frame the key challenges and opportunities in the sector – including emerging innovations in digital agriculture, water accounting, water supply and wastewater reuse – and to lay out broad strategic directions for action.
The background paper entitled “Addressing the water challenges in the agriculture sector in Near East and North Africa (NENA)” is part of a series of background papers that supported the production of the regional publication "State of Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW) in the Near East and North Africa Region". The paper reports on the issues, responses and monitoring progress in relation to supporting the region to maintain local agricultural production with less water.
This report presents a summary of the key challenges and opportunities related to financing that contributes to water security and sustainable growth distilling insights from the Roundtable on Financing Water and related analyses. It covers a broad range of water-related investments, including water and sanitation services, water resources management, agricultural water and managing water-related risks (“too much”, “too little” and “too polluted”).
Despite massive infrastructure investments, countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region continue to face unprecedented water scarcity due to climate change, population growth, and socioeconomic development. Current policy regimes for managing water across competing needs are primarily determined by state control of large infrastructure. Policy makers across the region understand the unsustainability of water allocations and that increasing investments in new infrastructure and technologies to increase water supply place a growing financial burden on governments. However, standard solutions for demand management—reallocating water to higher value uses, reducing waste, and increasing tariffs—pose difficult political dilemmas that, more often than not, are left unresolved. Without institutional reform, the region will likely remain in water distress even with increased financing for water sector infrastructure.The Economics of Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa: Institutional Solutions confronts the persistence and severity of water scarcity in MENA. The report draws on the tools of public economics to address two crucial challenges facing states in MENA: lack of legitimacy and trust. Evidence from the World Values Survey shows that people in the region believe that a key role of government is to keep prices down and that governments are reluctant to raise tariffs because of the risk of widespread protests. Instead of avoiding the “politically sensitive†? issue of water scarcity, this report argues that reform leaders and their external partners can reform national water institutions and draw on local political contestation to establish a new social contract. The crisis and emotive power of water in the region can be used to bolster legitimacy and trust and build a sustainable, inclusive, thriving economy that is resilient to climate change.
Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity
The United Nations World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is hosted and led by UNESCO. WWAP brings together the work of 31 UN-Water Members as well as 37 Partners to publish the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR) series. Under the theme Water for Sustainable Development, the WWDR 2015 has been prepared as a contribution from UN-Water to the discussions surrounding the post-2015 framework for global sustainable development. Highlighting water's unique and often complex role in achieving various sustainable development objectives, the WWDR 2015 is addressed to policy- and decision-makers inside and outside the water community, as well as to anyone with an interest in freshwater and its many life-giving benefits. The report sets an aspirational yet achievable vision for the future of water towards 2050 by describing how water supports healthy and prosperous human communities, maintains well functioning ecosystems and ecological services, and provides a cornerstone for short and long-term economic development. It provides an overview of the challenges, issues and trends in terms of water resources, their use and water-related services like water supply and sanitation. The report also offers, in a rigorous yet accessible manner, guidance about how to address these challenges and to seize the opportunities that sound water management provides in order to achieve and maintain economic, social and environmental sustainability.
Over the past few years, large-scale land acquisitions in Africa have stoked controversy, making headlines in media reports across the world. Land that only a short time ago seemed of little outside interest is now being sought by international investors to the tune of hundreds of thousands of hectares. Private-sector expectations of higher world food and commodity prices and government concerns about longer-term national food and energy security have both made land a more attractive asset. Dubbed ‘land grabs’ in the media, large-scale land acquisitions have become one of the most talked about and contentious topics amongst those studying, working in or writing about Africa. Some commentators have welcomed this trend as a bearer of new livelihood opportunities. Others have countered by pointing to negative social impacts, including loss of local land rights, threats to local food security and the risk that large-scale investments may marginalize family farming. Lorenzo Cotula, a leading expert in the field, casts a critical eye over the most reliable evidence on this hotly contested topic, examining the implications of land deals in Africa both for its people and for world agriculture and food security.
Released every three years since March 2003, the United Nations World Water Development Report (WWDR), a flagship UN-Water report published by UNESCO, has become the voice of the United Nations system in terms of the state, use and management of the world's freshwater resources. The report is primarily targeted at national decision-makers and water resource managers, but is also aimed at educating and informing a broader audience, from governments to the private sector and civil society. It underlines the important roles water plays in all social, economic and environmental decisions, highlighting policy implications across various sectors, from local and municipal to regional and international levels. Similarly to the first two editions, this report includes a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of several key challenge areas, such as water for food, energy and human health, and governance challenges such as institutional reform, knowledge and capacity-building, and financing, each produced by individual UN agencies.