The Ministry of Water Resources and ACSAD’s Director-General / Discussions.

His Excellency, the Water Resources Minister in the Syrian Arab Republic, Dr. Tamam Raad, and ACSAD Director-General, Dr. Nasr Edin Obaid, discussed climate change and its effects, especially drought phenomena and the decline of available water resources; the means of addressing those challenges through cooperation between the two parts.

During the meeting that took place at ACSAD’s headquarters in Damascus, His Excellency, the Minister, praised the Organization’s important role in cooperation with other organizations in studying climate change and its effects, especially on the water resources in the Arab region.

He also expressed his appreciation for ACSAD conducting many procedures in the Syrian Arab Republic to address and adapt to the climate change phenomena by implementing six self-financed dams, which provide water during severe conditions of drought to hundreds of farmers, that led to a significant increase in the productivity of the agricultural crop.

His Excellency, the Minister, pointed to the Center’s role in implementing 15 mathematical models included all the groundwater basins in the Syrian Arab Republic, and the important role of those models in achieving the balance between supply and demand, conservation of groundwater from over-pumping, and identifying the promised areas to be invested.

In his turn, Dr. Nasr Edin Obaid confirmed Arab Center’s readiness to develop ACSAD’s practical, technical, research expertise to help and support the water resources sector in the Syrian Arab Republic, in which achieving food and water security. Particularly, since ACSAD establishing, it raised the slogan of “the water security is a strategic companion to Arab food security.

At the end of the meeting, the two sides agreed on the importance of signing a framing cooperation convention aiming to expand the training programs, building the Ministry’s technical cadres capacities in various areas. Both sides also confirmed the necessity of extreme utilization from underground water mathematical models prepared by ACSAD previously through training the young technical cadres to use and develop those models.