Summary report and recommendations
Member Countries of the Near East vary in the type, quantity and format of the inventories of their land resources. Quite often, these data are sporadic, incomplete, out of date or based on diverse systems of land and soil classification and mapping. There is a need for the establishment of a user-friendly database on Land and Water Resources for each country, in a "capsule" form, to be available at the desktop of land use planners and decision makers.
Several countries have made significant progress towards having an up-to-date land inventory and map, such as Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Egypt, with FAO assistance, carried out a pilot project whereby a friendly website/gateway on land and water resources was established.
The purpose of these efforts is to enhance the capacity of countries to monitor the state of land and freshwater resources in terms of availability or scarcity, quality and trends in use, in order to facilitate sound decisions on their sustainable use worldwide. The Reports are to be prepared by country and by region. They are to be compiled in the form of a digital atlas to be made available through the Internet and on CD-ROM. The national report is addressed to planners and decision-makers in Government ministries, to donor agencies, researchers and University students, but also to the public at large.
This Workshop benefited from the Egyptian experience gained in creating this database and in establishing its Internet linkages. The Workshop has facilitated initiatives by the Countries in the Near East to harmonize the type, content and format of their land resources inventories, improve the quality of the land use and soil classification and mapping systems, and make further advances towards establishing a reporting system providing up-to-date information on the use and trend in the development of land resources.
This workshop was the first meeting on this subject in the Near East region. It was organized by FAO's Land and Water Development Division and Near East Regional Office in collaboration with the Executive Authority for Land Improvement Projects (EALIP) of Egypt. The objectives of the Workshop were to:
Senior land and water resources specialists from Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen participated in the meeting. Besides representatives from these countries, natural resources management specialists from four Regional Organizations (AOAD, ESCWA, League of Arab States, and UNEP Regional Office/Bahrain) attended the meeting. Mr G. Hamdallah, Regional Soils Officer (FAO/RNE), Mr S. Masui and Mr J. Antoine (FAO/AGL) formed the secretariat of the workshop. Egypt was chosen as the site of the meeting because EALIP has one of the best infrastructures in the region, including a national LRIS system and excellent meeting facilities.
The list of participants is given in Annex 3.
The opening session was presided over by Eng. Dawoud, Chairman EALIP, who delivered the welcome address (Annex 1). Welcoming and introductory remarks were presented by Mr G. Hamdallah on behalf of Dr Bukhari, ADG, and RNE (Annex 1). At the end of the workshop, Mr Hamdallah also gave the vote of thanks to EALIP and the persons responsible for the workshop organization.
The workshop focused on existing Land Resources Information Systems (LRIS) in the region. It demonstrated their operation and practical application in the assessment, mapping and monitoring of land in relation to food security as well as in the preparation of reports on the state of agricultural land and water use and development. The workshop discussed the methodology for preparation of the reports, the techniques of information dissemination for practical use in food security programmes and actions in the field, as well as the use of modern electronic communication tools, including the Internet. It also discussed ways to promote future exchange of information, data expertise and experiences in land information in the region using Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries (TCDC), and the preparation and updating of national reports and a regional report for the Near East countries. The workshop programme is given in Annex 2.
The workshop technical sessions addressed the following main topics:
Three papers were presented on this topic as well as demonstrations in the EALIP GIS unit and in the field.
Jacques Antoine gave an overview of the land and water resources information systems in FAO (Technical paper, page 9). AGL manages the land and water resources information systems. AGL has developed computer-based systems to analyze data and generate information to support decisions on various land and water issues. AGL uses the following five (5) kinds of tools as a means to store and analyze information and generate and disseminate information products for land and water resources management:
Details of the information systems can be found at the
following internet site:
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGL/Aglhomep.htm .
Ghassan Hamdallah discussed the status of development and application of LRIS systems in the region, highlighting the constraints and problems and the perspectives for the use of such systems in the Near East region (Technical paper, page 27).
S.I. Abdul Rahman gave an overview of the use of geoinformation technology for agriculture application in Egypt (Technical paper, page 35). Sachimine Masui gave a demonstration of the Gateway Web site: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGL/swlwpnr/swlwpnr.htm (Technical paper, page 43). This includes the Near East templates, which can be viewed at the following address: http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/AGRICULT/AGL/swlwpnr/y_nr/nr.htm
A visit to the EALIP LRIS Unit was organized by Dr Gomaa of EALIP. EALIP GIS staff presented EALIP's soil management information system including the GIS laboratory. The system is used as a key information and decision support tool in the management and monitoring of EALIP's country-wide land improvement and conservation programme. This was followed by a field visit to Kafr El Sheikh district in the Nile Delta to see the implementation of the various activities involved in the land improvement programme in irrigated areas. These activities include:
Issues raised during the visits related to:
Open discussions on these issues addressed the need for coordination between institutions regarding LRIS; the scale of mapping, criteria in mapping; data standardization, data resolution, quality and documentation, data sharing; the need for a way of thinking that recognizes LRIS as being integrated, multi-disciplinary, interagency and spatial.
However, optimism was expressed with regard to the increasing demand and wide acceptability of GIS-based LRIS technology, which could open up opportunities for grants and financial support.
After introductory remarks tracing the role of the AGL Gateway of FAO in the development and application of computer-based systems to analyze data and generate and disseminate information to support decisions on various land and water issues, country reports were presented by Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemen.
The Egypt presentation summarized the report available through the AGL Gateway. The Turkey, Yemen and Morocco presentations summarized complete National reports prepared for inclusion in the AGL Gateway via links with Home pages in the respective countries. Presentations by Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon addressed the state of the countries land, water and plant nutrient resources and could be used as a basis for preparation of full National reports utilizing the FAO Guidelines. Presentations by Jordan and Libya participants focused on the status of GIS-based Land Resources Information Systems in these countries.
Jacques Antoine gave an overview of the AGL guidelines and the Internet template (Annex 5, p.82) explaining how the AGL Gateway of FAO is intended as a central node of a distributed network for the dissemination of land and water information via the Internet. A standardized methodology for reporting on the state of land, water and plant nutrient resources incorporated in guidelines was presented. The guidelines are exhaustive and are presented in the form of a checklist of items, which can be followed depending on their relevance and availability of information in any country specific situation. The guidelines are available as an Internet template downloadable from the AGL Gateway.
An inventory of the status of the preparation of the reports was carried out. (Summary table in Annex 4)
Finalization of the reports was discussed. The main points raised by the participants concerning the completion of the reports included:
The meeting recognized the need for a plan of action, as a follow-up, to prepare or complete the country reports. The participants agreed to be responsible for the task and incorporate it in their work programme for the following months. In order to address the above issues and collect the necessary information to complete the reports the following procedures and methods were recommended:
The participants will develop a work programme including the following:
The Regional Soils Officer, FAORNE, will follow up with Iran and Oman to encourage them to produce country reports.
The meeting also discussed prospects for follow-up action at the regional level since not all of the countries in the region were represented at the Workshop. (The invited participant from Iran could not attend due to unavoidable circumstances).
The following points were considered in the discussion:
In the light of the above discussions the following was recommended:
