Iraq
Latest news related to Iraq
FAO and IHE-Delft Deliver Training on Remote Sensing for Agricultural Water Management
27/09/2024
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education recently conducted an in-person training on remote sensing for agricultural water management. The event took place at IHE-Delft in the Netherlands from 18 to 27 September 2024.
...On-the-job training for irrigation performance assessment tool in West Gharraf, Iraq
05/08/2024
From October 1, 2023, the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), as a partner in the WaPOR II project, has been working on developing a WaPOR tool for monitoring land and water productivity and irrigation performance assessment for the West Gharraf irrigation project in Iraq. The ini...
FAO and IWMI Host Co-Design Workshop for WaPOR-Based Irrigation Performance Assessment Tool in West Al-Gharraf, Iraq
30/04/2024
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) collaborated to host a co-design workshop aimed at advancing the irrigation performance assessment tool in West Al-Gharraf, Iraq on April 30th.
Technical experts from...
WaPOR and QGIS regional training in Amman, Jordan
07/02/2024
Between 4 and 7 February, WaPOR hosted a regional training in Jordan including participants from Jordan itself, Iraq, Palestine and Egypt.
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About Iraq
Iraq's water resources heavily depend on the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, which serve as surface water resources, as well as several fertile groundwater aquifers. Nonetheless, Iraq has shift from a water-secure to a water-stressed country over the last 30 years due to a combination of reasons, including:
- Neighboring countries’ development projects upstream from the Tigris-Euphrates, affecting quality and quantity of the water flow.
- Centralized and complicated governance of water, together with inadequate regulatory framework and enforcement.
- Reduced water use efficiency, with 75 per cent used in irrigation.
- Seventy-five per cent of irrigated land in central and southern Iraq is affected by salinization.
- Water contamination due to mainly untreated municipal and industrial wastewater discharge.
- Iraq is one of the most vulnerable countries of the Middle East to climate change.
To address this challenge, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands, and MOWR has included Iraq in the second phase of the WaPOR project “Monitoring land and water productivity by Remote Sensing 2021-2025”.
The project aligns with the second government priority of the FAO-Iraq Country Program Framework (CPF) 2018-2022: “Restoration of degraded agricultural land and higher productivity of water resources in agriculture” and the 4th strategic priority of “Promoting Natural Resource and Disaster Risk Management, and Climate Change Resilience" under the Iraq United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2020-2024.
Project milestones:
December 2021: WaPOR phase 2 inception workshop in Baghdad
June 2022: WaPOR introductory training
November 2022: field data collection and validation training
January 2023: data collection for crop mapping training
Pilot areas:
- West Gharraf irrigation project area (Wasit /Thi Qar) for crop mapping, area measurement and production estimation; assessment of Water Consumption (WC) & Water productivity (WP); identification of best agricultural and irrigation practices to increase the water productivity of the main crops; all in support of the development of improved water allocation strategies;
- The second site is Shamamuk Irrigation project area in the Erbil basin for the identification of irrigated areas including unplanned groundwater extraction; assessment of the impact of irrigation withdrawals on groundwater resources and link its results to a local groundwater monitoring database.
WaPOR partnerships in Iraq
WaPOR phase 2 is implemented in conjunction with the Ministry of Water Resources, which co-chairs the project's Steering Committee alongside the FAO. All other partners (Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources in Kurdistan region and Ministry of Planning in Kurdistan region) are also represented in the committee.
© FAO/Cengiz Yar