General Summary on the Near East and North Africa

The Near East and North Africa region (grouping the countries represented in the FAO Regional Office for the Near East) extends from the Atlantic Ocean (Mauritania and Morocco) in the west to Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan in the east and from Turkey and Kyrgyzstan in the north to Somalia in the south. It falls between longitudes 17° west and 80° east and latitudes 43° north and 2° south. In May 1996, it comprised 29 countries with a total area of 18.5 million km², which is about 14% of the total area of the world (including the interior lakes).

For the purpose of this study, the 29 countries have been grouped in five sub-regions based primarily on geographic conditions and, as far as possible, on hydro-climatic homogeneity. These subregions, presented in Figure 1, are here referred to as Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia), North-eastern Africa (Djibouti, Egypt, Somalia, Sudan), Arabian Peninsula (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen), Middle East (Cyprus, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Malta, Syria, Turkey) and Central Asia (Afghanistan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan).

This section briefly presents the particularities which can be observed at national and regional level, as well as trends which emerge from the information which was collected. The section is divided into the following sub-sections:

	Geography, climate and population
	Water resources
	Water withdrawal
	Irrigation potential
	Water managed areas and irrigation
	Indicators of irrigation intensity
	Irrigated crops
	Salinization, drainage and environment
	Thematic maps