Session FT 5.03

Risk Management assessment in river basins. 

 

 

 

 

Conveners

• Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Egypt
• AWC Arab Water Council

The main objectives of the session were to promote awareness about risk management, to serve as a platform of exchange, to contribute to harmonisation with other local actions in the region and to help to establish new partnerships and finally to come up with concrete conclusions and recommendations on strengthening local action for risk management in river basins.
In that perspective, the lead questions adressed by the sessions were the following :
· Where do you see the challenges and opportunities that relate to risk management in river basins?
· What are the added values of regional programmes in comparison to local and national ones?
· How can the presented actions be ingested into one best practice actions that can be incorporated into risk management

Lessons learned

 

1. The importance of defining the risk margin that may be posed by climate change uncertainty
2. Follow up results after implementation (short-term and long -term impact and knock-on effects)
3. The short term impact is building capacity, raising awareness
4. Considering risks and converting them into adaptation planes
5. Social impact (benefits of grassroots people: poverty alleviation, improvement of quality of life)
6. Minimize flood and drought risks and water shortage
7. Economic impact (grassroots economic benefits: job opportunities, economic development)
8. Improve agriculture production and maintain infrastructure system
9. Environmental impact (does the project target an important challenge within the water environment?)
10. The project outcomes will have implicit impact on water quality but it does not target it directly
11. Scale of the impact, i.e., local, basin, sub-basin, regional, national, or international, National level

Key messages

 

1. There is a need to increase the resilience of river basins to overcome future risks that may arise from climate change or other hazards.
2. There is a high importance for follow up results after implementation (short-term and long -term impact and knock-on effects).
3. Building capacity, raising awareness is vital for minimizing the impacts of risk hazards.
4. It is important to quantify risks and converting them into adaptation planes.
5. Minimize flood and drought risks will minimize water shortage
6. Improve agriculture production and maintain infrastructure system
7. Environmental impact are to be clearly assessed (does the project target an important challenge within the water environment?)
8. The consideration of the scale of the impact, i.e., local, basin, sub-basin, regional, national, or international, National level

Orientations for action

 

1. The plans for sustaining the action should be clearly reported and the problems to assure sustainability identified, as well as the possibility of scaling-up local actions
2. The obstacles toward sustainability are mainly keeping the trained, knowledgeable staff, also keeping the gained momentum in further developing the system and sustaining the resources.
3. Sustainability needs commitments. The main commitment to assure sustainability is through making partnership with local, national, regional and international institutions. This will keep the knowledge update and enable further development of the system.

Local Actions presented

 

Risk Management in Jordan River

Fadl Kawash, Palestine Water Authority

 

The Palestine Authority paper concentrated on Jordan river risk management, where freshwater scarcity results from multiple factors and most severely affects Israel, Jordan, the west bank, and the Gaza strip. The eastern and southern parts of this region are semi-arid to arid, receiving as little as 50 to 250 millimeters of rainfall per year. This puts stress on different issues of water use and allocation.

 

Lake Nasser Risk Management, integration with climate change uncertainty and flooding risks

Mohamed Abdel Aty Sayed, MWRI, Egypt

 

Egypt presented The Lake Nasser Flood and Drought Control project (LNFDC), which is one in a long row of projects, carried out at the Planning Sector of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation all focussing on the water management in Egypt and the water supply from upstream Lake Nasser.

With the LNFDC project a complete chain of modelling tools has been brought together at one location, the Nile Forecasting Centre, which can be used for an integrated assessment of various changes in water supply and demand in the Entire Nile Basin. It helps in building up future scenarios to manage effects of foreseen changes in rainfall and evaporation patterns due to climate changes in the Nile basin as well as effects of upstream developments such as water saving projects and irrigation schemes.

 

Climatic hazards and counting on the desalination of seawater as an equilibrium factor

Seidi Abdel Rahman, Algeria

 

The paper concentrated on the use of non-conventional water resources to mitigate the forseen impacts of climate change risks. Special attention is given to water resources in Algeria together with different risks and challenges associated with it.

Special attention is given to the use of non-conventional water resources, especially climatic hazard and counting on the desalination of seawater as an equilibrium factor to compensate the shortages in available water resources.