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 suffer the bulk of this shock.

Strategic Planning of this vital resource and enhancing the way it is managed has become an imperative today, especially in the NENA region which might see water scarcity accentuated because of climate change.

To respond to these needs, FAO has developed AquaCrop, a crop water productivity model and training tool for all relevant partners from different regions in the world. Experts from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen gathered in Cairo for four days and were trained on  the practical applications of AquaCrop as a tool to increase crop water productivity in rainfed and irrigated production systems.

The workshop was 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 better use and management of scarce water resources.