Background and sites
The Occupied Palestinian Territory has a total area of 6 020 km2. The West Bank is a landlocked territory on the west bank of the Jordan River with a total area of 5 655 km2, surrounded by Jordan to the east and Israel to the south, west and north. The majority of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank are still under full Israeli control (Area C). Despite the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian farmers have restricted access to land in buffer or border areas (40 percent of Gaza agricultural land).
The climate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is predominantly of the eastern Mediterranean type with cool and rainy winters, hot dry summers and an annual rainfall in the range of 100-700 mm. The water resources include mainly groundwater and a little bit of surface water. The agriculture sector in Palestine contributes to food security and is responsible for around nine percent of total employment in Palestine. Women supply about 87 percent of the labor input in livestock production and 54 percent in plant production (mostly in rain fed agriculture). Despite their major contribution to agricultural labor, many rural women carry out this work unpaid.
Twenty percent of the total area of Palestine is used for agriculture (90 percent West Bank, and 10 percent Gaza Strip). Rain fed agriculture is dominant representing 81 percent, while irrigated areas cover 19 percent, mainly located in the Gaza Strip and the Jordan Valley. Agriculture in Palestine is a family business where women play a major role in the manual agricultural practices. It is important to investigate both irrigation efficiency and water productivity. Application efficiency of irrigation systems is good ranging between 75-90 percent for drip and 65-75 percent for sprinklers. Most of the losses occur in the water conveyance systems. There are no actual estimates of water productivity (bio-physical or economic) except scattered statistics.
Some of the main gaps highlighted for the water use in agriculture: Moderate irrigation efficiency, particularly of conveyance systems with open canals, no monitoring system and no actual measurement of water quantities or water productivity, lack of water storage capacities, small agriculture holdings (75 percent less than 10 dunums), Use of traditional practices and low financial capacities, Weak post-harvest processing capacities (skills, technologies, equipment), Low competitiveness (occupation, high transaction costs, limited access to markets, low marketing capacities, limited agro-business), Conservative social customs and traditions restrict women's engagement in agriculture. Limited ownership of agricultural assets (7.2 percent of land holders are female), weak ability to access finance, low participation in agricultural cooperatives.
Project in the country
In Palestine, the project works on the following outputs: (i) water accounting and auditing: Adoption of international standards and scientifically sound ‘water accounting systems’ based on ground truth and Remote Sensing (RS); and (ii) water productivity- increasing water irrigation efficiency and productivity, (iii). The project works in different sites of the country for the different outputs. Further details on the activities, events and results.
The main activities implemented in Palestine under the three outputs are:
1) Water accounting - Setting sustainable limits of water consumption
a) knowing cropping realities- - crop mapping patterns to assess crop evapotranspiration and water productivity;
b) measuring and validating Evapotranspiration (ET) – increasing certainties on crop evapotranspiration (crop ET); piloting ET monitoring for the RNA ET network;
c) learning by doing water accounting & auditing – understanding the water scarcity situation, its causes and trends and the human context using water governance analysis.
2) Water efficiency and productivity- Making the best use of every drop of water in agriculture
a) national baseline on water productivity (literature review);
b) site level and watershed level water productivity assessment to understand opportunities for improvement (farmer survey and modelling);
c) farmers experimentation on water productivity using the Farmer Field Schools approach;
d) gender, social inclusion and decentralized governance;
e) assessing micro-scale water harvesting effect on the water availability for crops
3) Nexus water-food-energy
a) assessment of solar powered irrigation systems SPIS impact on water management and farmers;
b) proposal for an SPIS viable business.
Project Sites
The project activities focus mainly on Jenin governorate and part of Tubas governorate. This is an important area for agricultural production and where irrigation development and greenhouse development has taken place by mainly small farmers (subsistence farmers) and semi-commercial farmers and to some extent commercial farmers (private investors at a fast pace and agricultural water demand is reaching a limit in those sites. Farmers Field Schools FFSs in the project are not confined to the Eocene basin as indicated in the map below, the Project Management decided to response to the Palestinians demands on the selection of the deemed crops and the district accordingly. Within this context, five FFSs were either implemented or ongoing out of the area deemed for water accounting, water productivity and water sustainability.
North of West Bank: Jenin
