FAO and IHE Delft WA+ publications
Through a collaboration between IHE Delft Institute for Water Education and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations under the project on “using remote sensing in support of solutions to reduce agricultural water productivity gaps funded by the Netherlands Government, a series of Water Accounting Plus studies were implemented by the Water Accounting group and published by FAO.
Many river basins in Africa and the Near East face huge challenges in terms of water security. Water supply in the basins are being depleted as agricultural, domestic and industrial water demand continue to grow. Water availability in the basins will also be threatened by climate change and variability and pollution from increased agricultural and industrial activities and from urban areas. However with limited up-to-date ground observations in many part of the regions, in terms of duration, completeness, and quality of the hydro-meteorological records it is difficult to draw an appropriate picture of the water resources conditions.
The Water Accounting Plus (WA+) system designed by IHE Delft with its partners FAO and IWMI has been applied to gain full insights into the state of the water resources in six river basins in Africa and the Near East. These basin include Litani River Basin in Lebanon, Awash River Basin in Ethiopia, Jordan River Basin, Nile River Basin, Niger River Basin and Lake Chad Basin. The WA+ reports of the first 4 basins have already been published as FAO WaPOR water accounting reports series and the last two will be published soon.
As part of the project output, we have also started an online course on Water Productivity and Water Accounting using WaPOR. The course is designed for practitioners and academicians who are working in water resources management and related fields and have interest in applying open access remote sensing data and other open data to assess the water resources situation and water productivity and the extent to which water productivity increases have an effect on different water users in a river basin context.