About MAWSA NENA

Managing Water Scarcity in Agriculture in the Near East and North Africa - MAWSA NENA - is a collaborative regional knowledge platform set up by FAO and partners in 2015. The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is naturally exposed to chronic water shortage and may be facing the most severe intensification of water scarcity in history. Agriculture, which already consumes 85% of available fresh water resources will be suffering the most, with possibly major consequences for poverty and food security. To address these challenges, in 2013 FAO launched its Water Scarcity Initiative (WSI) in the Near East and North Africa (NENA). A key part of the WSI is the Regional Collaborative Strategy on Sustainable Agricultural Water Management (RCS, First Print Edition published in December 2014).

The RCS identifies a set of information gaps and key problems in water for agriculture and highlights the need to strengthen knowledge, linkages, cooperation and coordination amongst stakeholders at local, national and regional levels. The RCS documents options for filling the information gaps and for addressing the key problems.

The RCS was presented at the FAO Land & Water Days in Amman in December 2013. At the Arab Water Forum in Cairo in December 2014, it was agreed that FAO would set up a collaborative knowledge platform to support mutual learning on the key problems and to make available new data to support better agricultural water management. This platform is MAWSA NENA.

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