With fresh water availability set to drop by 50 percent by the year 2050, the Near East and North Africa (NENA) may be facing the most severe intensification of water shortage in history. Agriculture, which uses the 85 percent of the NENA total freshwater, will most likely absorb the bulk of this shock. Planning strategically the allocation of this important and vital resource and enhancing the way it is managed and used, has become an imperative today, especially in areas that, like the NENA region, might see water scarcity accentuated due to the impacts of climate change. To respond to these needs, FAO has developed , a crop water productivity model and is training to its use relevant partners from different regions in the world. Next Sunday experts from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen will gather in Cairo for four days to be trained in the practical applications of AquaCrop as a tool to increase crop water productivity in rainfed and irrigated production systems. The workshop will be organized within the framework of the FAO Initiative on Water Scarcity, a regional initiative that is promoting cooperation among NENA countries to sustainably improve agricultural productivity, through a better use and management of scarce water resources.