The Regional Initiative on Water Scarcity (WSI), launched by FAO in 2013, was formulated to support the countries of the NENA region (the Middle East and North Africa) to deal with one of their most pressing challenges: monitoring of food security and water for a sustainable economic and social and, by virtue of a serious escalation of unprecedented water scarcity.

Following a broad participatory approach, the first result of this initiative was the "regional collaborative strategy on the sustainable management of agricultural water in the Middle East and North Africa." This regional strategy is a collaborative framework to systematically identify information gaps and key issues in the agricultural water sector and to highlight the need to strengthen the knowledge, cooperation and coordination between stakeholders levels local, national and regional that will be used in the rationalization of policies, investments, governance and practices to improve agricultural productivity and food security in a sustainable manner in the region.