Rabat hosts Arab conference on irrigation
Rabat is hosting November 13-16 an Arab conference on irrigation meant to foster exchange of expertise between agricultural research centers and associations of irrigation users.
The conference, sponsored by the Arab organization for agricultural development, will seek to set up a common strategy to enhance the role of research centers and to consolidate cooperation between irrigation users associations and research and orientation institutions, the ultimate goal being to rationalize the use of water resources.
Participants in the opening session Tuesday stressed the need for Arab countries to adopt efficient strategies to rationalize the use of irrigation waters and to prompt irrigation users to adopt new irrigation technologies to spare water.
Drought has been plaguing many Arab countries in North Africa and the Middle East over the past decade and water resources are becoming increasingly scarcer.
A study, released last August by Egypt's Al-Ahli Bank, anticipated water shortage in the Arab region to go from 102 billion cubic meters this year to 303 billion cubic meters in 2025.
The study said by year 2025, the person's annual share of water would stand at 464 cubic meters, below international standards, if water policies continued as they are and this would derail economic and social development and consequently place the Arab nation below the water poverty line 25 years later.
Morocco, a country with a semi-arid weather, has realized since the early years of independence from France in 1956 the importance of an efficient water management policy to spare growing populations the hazards of the severe drought that hits the country on a cyclic basis. A dam construction policy was initiated in the early sixties, part of an ambitious program to ensure the irrigation of more than 1 million hectares by year 2000.
Experts from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen are taking part in the Rabat conference.