The role of UNESCO in sustainable water resources management in the Arab World

Most of the Arab countries are located in arid and semi-arid zones known for their scanty annual rainfall, very high rates of evaporation and consequently extremely insufficient renewable water resources. Sustainable management of water resources is a must as water scarcity is becoming more and more a development constraint impeding the economic growth of many countries in the region. The International Hydrological Programme of the UNESCO (IHP) is a vehicle through which member states can upgrade their knowledge of the water cycle and thereby increase their capacity to better manage and develop their water resources. It aims at the improvement of the scientific and technological basis for the development of methods for the rational management of water resources. In UNESCO, current concentration areas of IHP in the Arab Region are Groundwater Protection and Rainfall Water Management, with special emphasis on Wadi Hydrology. Concentration areas are selected during the regional meeting of Arab IHP National Committees, held each biennium. Activities in the Arab Region include both research and training. The sixth phase of IHP strives to minimize the risks to vulnerable water resources systems, taking fully into account social challenges and interactions and developing appropriate approaches for sound water management. Assessing the global time and space distribution of freshwater availability and use, developing approaches to reduce the vulnerability of hydrosystems and their supporting ecosystems and improving water resources management for vulnerable areas are among the main objectives. Capacity-building and water education and training, as well as institutional development (with emphasis in the use of information and communication technologies for water resources research and training) are reinforced, and the social and ethical views of water users are incorporated into the development of conflict prevention and resolution. Many extra budgetary projects are initiated in UNESCO Cairo Office: the UNESCO/Flanders Funds-In-Trust Project on Capacity Building and Training on Environmental Planning and Management in Palestine. A FRIEND (Flow Regimes from International Experimental and Network Data Sets) Project for the river Nile is recently launched. FRIEND is one of IHP’s success stories which is considered as a cross-cutting theme in IHP-VI. The FRIEND/Nile project has selected various research projects, being carried out Presented at the EuroMed 2002 conference on Desalination Strategies in South Mediterranean Countries: Cooperation between Mediterranean Countries of Europe and the Southern Rim of the Mediterranean. Sponsored by the European Desalination Society and Alexandria University Desalination Studies and Technology Center, Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, May 4–6, 2002. 0011-9164/02/$– See front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved