Water Accounting / training course / in ACSAD
Under the patronage of the Water Resources Minister, Dr. Tammam Ra’ad, the presence of the head of the Syndicate of the Syrian Agriculture Engineers, Dr. Rama Aziz, the representative of the Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform in Syria, dr. Jalal Muhammed Ghazala, and the head of Syrian Agriculture Chambers, Mr. Muhammed Kashto. The Arab Center for the Studies of Arid Zones and Drylands, in cooperation with the British University East Anglia, held a training workshop in ACCSAD’s headquarters on Water Accounting in the frame of collaboration to enhance the Arab technical capacities building and development in the field of utilizing from modern technologies and to find them successful solutions.
The Director-General of the Arab Center ACSAD, Dr. Nasr Edin Obaid, said during the training workshop opening that the water issue was one of the most important issues in the Arab region and was expected to increase in quality and be exposed to the effects of climate change that are sweeping the area dramatically. He called for the mobilization of the necessary material, financial capabilities, and scientific resources to take appropriate action through appropriate means and tools, the most important of which was water accounting that maintains water resources and determines its financial usages, alerting to the probable impact of influencing factors and the importance of the availability of demanded information and database.
He also stressed the dynamic importance of maintaining water management, saying:” the Water accounting procedures must be easily adjustable according to challenges and condition changes; with the necessity of continuing of controlling and evaluating, and providing requisite information to the particular database.
The Director-General of ACSAD Organization confirmed that the Arab Center, since its establishment, focused on building and developing the Arab capabilities in the field of water resources development and maintaining it. He noted the actions implemented by the Center on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic in water field within the field of water accounting, such as using the Eddy Covariance technology to determine the water needs or using of decision support system to determine the surface and groundwater budgets, associating the demand on the water with the available resources, using the mathematical models to manage the groundwater, putting in place the futuristic scenarios to use it with taking into account the climatic changes and population increase. The Center also conducted many workshops and training programs like water harvesting projects in Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, and Syria.
In his part, the Water Resources Minister called to concert the efforts, gather the potentials, and cooperate with the international and Arab organizations to overcome the great challenges that water resources address them on the level of drought waves that reflected negatively on the storage of surfaces and groundwater resources.
Dr. Raad expressed his appreciation for the constant support provided by ACSAD to the technical cadres in other relevant ministries through transferring modern technologies and sciences during the training workshops organized by the Center in the water field in less than a year, which would be reflected positively on the sustainable use of available water resources and achieve the balance between supply and demand.
Trainees from the Agriculture Ministry, agricultural information, Water Resources Ministry, and the local Administration Ministry participate in this training course for three days. This workshop aims to determine the crops’ water needs using remote sensing technologies and geographic information systems (GIS), utilizing the water database requisite for irrigation management.
