FAO-WaPOR II project continues to develop capacities and increase technical follow-up

The meeting was chaired by Dr. Hatem Hamid Hussein, Director General of the Planning and Follow-up Department at the Ministry of Water Resources, Dr. Salah ElHajj Hassan, FAO Representative in Iraq, and attended by representatives from Ministries of Agriculture, Planning, Environment, Higher Education and Scientific Research, Agriculture and Water Resources and planning in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and international partners from the IHE Delft Water Education Institute and the International Water Resources Management Institute (IWMI).

Dr. Hussein praised the importance of the data provided by the WaPOR platform, (the FAO Water Productivity Open-access portal), saying that the Ministry’s technicians have actually used this data to extract indicators and prepare reports that were approved by governmental decision-makers.

FAO representative stressed the importance of benefiting from the data of this platform, which allows comparing land and water productivity and other indicators spatially and temporally in different parts, such as irrigation project areas or at the river basin level, to assess the impacts of interventions and improve irrigation system operations and resource use efficiency. 

The WaPOR project aims to help partner countries develop their capacities to monitor and improve water and agricultural land productivity, and thus respond to the challenges imposed by the increasing pressure on freshwater resources and the need to sustain agricultural production to ensure food security in the face of climate change.

FAO and project partners: IHE DELFT and IWMI, reviewed the activities carried out during 2023-2024 regarding capacity development to assess irrigation performance in the study areas of the West Gharraf Irrigation Project (Wasit and Thi Qar) and the Shamamuk Project in Erbil. The challenges facing the irrigation sector in Iraq and the added value provided by the project were also discussed, especially in increasing water efficiency use in the agricultural sector. 

The SC concluded its meeting by emphasizing the sustainability of capacity building interventions and increasing the technical follow-up for the trained teams. The SC stressed also on technical team members’ commitment to the training programs to enable them to manage the WaPOR tool that will be hosted by the Ministry of Water Resources to monitor irrigation performance in the West Gharraf Irrigation Project area and the WaPOR tool that will be hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources in the Kurdistan Regional Government to monitor groundwater abstraction for agricultural purposes in the Shamamuk Irrigation Basin. 

The training programs will also provide team members with the required ability to widely transfer knowledge, in addition to discussing the opportunities to expand the project framework of the two study areas.