27 October 2011: The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has reported on the implementation of its project, “Information Products for Nile Basin Water Resource Management,” financed by the Government of Italy. FAO warns against the threats to food security and poverty eradication in the Nile River Basin posed by increasing population growth and natural resource degradation.
According to FAO, the decade-long project established modern hydrological monitoring and reporting systems across the Nile Basin, assisted government authorities in harmonizing data gathering, and produced surveys of water use and agricultural production. It aimed to strengthen the ability of the governments of the 10 Nile countries to take informed decisions with regard to water resources policy and management in the Basin.
The report on the project, which was presented in Kigali, Rwanda, on 27 October 2011, indicates that the population in the Nile Basin is expected to increase by between 61 to 82 percent by 2030, while challenges to poverty eradication, including environmental degradation, drought, weak institutions, low financial capacity, inadequate infrastructure and social instability, are predicted to perpetuate.
The report calls for increasing the efficiency and productivity of water use along the whole food production chain, building climate-resilient farming systems, and enhancing trade in agricultural commodities within the region. The project has resulted in four reports, titled “Food For Thought,” “Synthesis Report,” “Projections Report,” and “Farming Systems Report;” as well as 18 technical manuals on water measurement techniques and technologies. In addition, the project featured capacity building activities, which trained hundreds of staff in water management and agriculture agencies. It also led to the production of Geographic Information System (GIS) data on water, land and agriculture, which permitted the creation of the Nile Decision Support Tool (Nile-DST) — a software that models the entire Nile system and allows planners to assess the trade-offs and consequences of different possible development scenarios. [FAO Press Release] [Project Website] [Reports and Manuals]