First National Level workshop on WaPOR dataset held in Sri Lanka
Climate change, population growth and water scarcity – these are the challenges many countries face today, including Sri Lanka. Thus, a strengthened focus on water governance for agriculture and food security is needed.
FAO’s KnoWat project in the country aims to strengthen Sri Lanka’s water governance processes, by building on the existing Water Productivity through Open access of Remotely sensed derived data (WaPOR) Portal.
The aim is to develop an operational geospatial database on agricultural water consumption and water productivity. Adequate data and information can assist in proper planning and management of water resources, and guide investments.
As part of KnoWat’s work plan, a series of training workshops focusing on multiple levels (national, catchment and scheme) have been planned to build the technical capacity of project partners in Sri Lanka to utilize this WaPOR database.
The very first workshop on it was now conducted at the national level in a hybrid format on 28 June 2022. It focused especially on utilizing the national level WaPOR datasets for WaPOR data for the SEEA-water accounting.
Around twenty people from eight different organizations within the Sri Lankan government participated.
At the beginning of the workshop, Mr Leel Randeni, Assistant Director from the Ministry of Environment, Sri Lanka, and Dr Lal Mutuwatte, Senior regional researcher from IWMI in Sri Lanka gave their welcoming remarks.
Later the WaPOR portal was introduced to the participants and hands-on training were provided for them to explore, access, and download data from the portal for Sri Lanka.