Countries
The project is implemented in eight countries of the NENA region: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Tunisia. These countries have diverse economies, water resource endowments and irrigation sectors, with a range of performances and a different set of challenges. There are, nonetheless, also many commonalities amongst them. The experimentation happening in those countries and the lessons learnt would therefore inform the other countries of the region.
An important outcome of the project is that countries of the NENA region would be empowered at technical, institutional and policy levels to implement their water sustainability, food security, renewable energy and climate resilient agendas and to achieve the water-related SDG 6 to 2030 within safe operational boundaries of water use.
To achieve this objective, each country experiment on approaches and methodologies introduced by the project on pilot sites.
The following include the set of criteria used for the site selection in the eight different countries:
1. The availability of data in particular of historic data series for key climatic parameters;
2. Existence of complex water issues;
3. Existence in the vicinity of a local research center;
4. Representative farming systems – strategic crops for the country;
5. Water scarcity perceived by farmers and resulting in tensions or conflicts in time of dry spells;
6. Available assessment on water resources;
7. Opportunities to improve agricultural practices;
8. Opportunities to target small scale farmers who could benefit from improved water use;
9. Opportunities to pilot technologies/changes without side effects.