Overview
Introduction and objective
Water scarcity will increase in Egypt mainly due to effects of climate change and population growth. The growing water scarcity is affecting the economy, society and environment and therefore requires urgent attention. The National Water Resources Plan 2037 (NWRP 2037) has set ambitious goals to address this water issue through 4 objectives and 61 cost-effective measures. A main focus of the NWRP 2037 is to enhance the management of water use, particularly in the agricultural sector as the main water consumer in Egypt. Therefore the Plan has set specific water-related goals for the agricultural sector including: i) implementing innovations that contribute towards lower use of water per unit of land; ii) growing less water consuming crops and control the area cultivated with high water consuming crops; iii) organization of water use associations; iv) upgrading the canal infrastructure and v) improving the water distribution and the set-up of a proper metering system for water deliveries and consumption (water accounting). Expanding on integrated Agro-Aquaculture (IAA) including water recycling systems is also seen as main development area. Based on these goals and multiple meetings with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) to verify priority needs of action, the project has defined four objectives within the field of agricultural water management.
a) To understand to what extent the current irrigation modernization strategy (canal lining and pressurized irrigation) and potential other innovations can improve the water use-efficiency and water saving capacity of agricultural water use in the Egyptian Delta. For the selected innovations, insights into the effects on the water- and salt balance, particularly for the groundwater and drainage system as well as effects on the business-case for farmers and broader socio-economic impacts from local to regional (mesqa) and (sub)delta level through a roadmap will be assessed.
b) To gain knowledge regarding possibilities of innovative agri- and/or aquaculture (or mix) systems to improve the water use-efficiency and water saving capacity of agricultural water use in the Egyptian Delta under increasing water- and soil salinity at local to regional (mesqa) and (sub)delta scales through a modelling approach with SWAP-WOFOST and SIWARE software.
c) To have insights into the effects of irrigation and cropping innovations on socio-economic aspects in the delta through analyzing business cases for farmers and building on strategies for upscaling innovation adoption.
d) To analyze and quantify various external measures & scenarios including climate change scenarios and strategies on water allocation in the Egyptian Delta and the possibilities and limitations of expanding agricultural areas in the desert (new lands) to support water-related decision making.
The A4I Tasks
Based on the objectives, the project will work on six concrete tasks:
Task 1: implement a Living Lab Approach to define and explore the potential of existing irrigation and agricultural innovations from bottom-up. This task will provide insight into potential of multiple innovations to improve agricultural water use efficiency and effects on socio-economic conditions.
Task 2: pilots of irrigation and agricultural innovations in Qaliobia, northern delta and Wadi El-Natron. In each pilot the effects on innovation on water- and salt balance, business-case and socio-economic circumstances will be assessed. The innovations include canal lining, pressurized irrigation and irrigation & agri- and/or aquaculture innovations in (saline) environments. The work includes field scale monitoring and modelling with SWAP-WOFOST.
Task 3: assess effects of irrigation & agricultural innovations from tasks 1 & 2 and impacts of cropping pattern changes on water- and salt balance at the regional to sub-delta scale, using the combination of SWAP-WOFOST and SIWARE modelling. This analysis reveals impacts of innovations on specific water systems such as drainage and groundwater which is relevant for e.g. evaluating existing drainage guidelines, mesqa/marwa irrigation management and groundwater management. Task 3 further entails an assessment regarding the effects of innovations on business-case and socio-economic circumstances from regional to sub-delta level to identify potential for upscaling as well as suitable instruments for upscaling or irrigation modernization. These analyses will be presented through a roadmap.
Task 4: development of a quantification framework for the assessment of impacts of external scenarios and irrigation, drainage and water allocation measures and strategies on water availability, quality and productivity from regional to (sub)delta level.
Task 5: identification of external scenarios, measures and strategies, to be evaluated with the quantification framework. This allows exploration of what-if scenarios and the impact of measures and strategies on different scales. External scenarios could include climate change, population growth, and changes in world market food prices, whereas measures and strategies includes amongst others modernized irrigation, and expanding agricultural areas in the new lands.
Task 6: development of a user-friendly integrated policy dashboard to present relevant decision making information on the impact of scenarios, measures and strategies to decision makers, using output of the quantification framework from task 4.
Training
A4I Assessing the Impacts of Irrigation Improvements and Innovations, a living lab approach
Based on the action plans of the A4I research projects in JCAR, preliminary list of training topics and activities has been defined:
For JCAR partners
- Design considerations for living lab pilots, including design of monitoring networks
- Modelling and analysis tools (e.g. water requirements, water balance, economics)
- Development of business cases, and economic analysis
- Development of scenarios and strategies
- Development of dashboards
For MWRI and stakeholders
- Pilot design and measurement techniques
- Use of modelling as planning tool (for planners and modellers)
- Utilisation of computational framework to support decision making (for planners and managers)
- Economic modelling
- Co-creation of decision -support dashboards
Training topics
Team
+31-621211635
Dr. Eric Smaling is a senior researcher of Wageningen Environmental Research at Wageningen University & Research. He holds an MSc in soil science and a PhD in soil fertility management
from Wageningen University. Smaling conducted research in soil geography, land evaluation
and integrated soil fertility management, mainly in Indonesia, East and West Africa. Between 1997 and 2012, he has been Professor of soil science and sustainable agriculture, first at Wageningen
University, later at the University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC). He has also been a Senator (2007-2013) and then a Member of Lower House (2013-2017) in the Dutch parliament for the Socialist Party. Since 2017 he has been at Wageningen University & Research again
Mohamed E. A. El-sayed is a senior researcher (Associate Professor) and the director of the technical office of Soils, Water, and Environmental Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt. He is an American Chemical Society member as well as a member of the Egyptian National Committee of Soil Sciences (NCSC). Mohamed El-sayed earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Egypt's Sohag University in 2013. He received the Annual Prize Award for the best-published article from the Soils, Water, and Environmental Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Egypt in the same year he received his Ph.D. He received a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholarship in 2014 and is affiliated with South Dakota State University, USA. For his presentation at the 249th ACS National Meeting in Denver, CO, he received a Certificate of Merit from the ACS Division of Environmental Chemistry. He is a principal nominee for the Fulbright Alumni Activity: Egypt Food Security Research Project in 2019-2021. In 2020, he received a certificate of Second Rank Award from the International Web Conference 'Perspective on Agricultural and Applied Sciences in the COVID-19 Scenario (PAAS-2020)' for his oral presentation (October 4-6, 2020). He was awarded Distinguished Scientist Award-2021, from the Agricultural & Environmental Technology Development Society.
El-sayed is the author of numerous international publications, including high-impact research papers and book chapters. He was a co-convener of a session at the 16th International Clay Conference called 'Environmental Applications of Clay Minerals.' He presently serves as an editor for Advancements in Material journal and the International Journal of Environmental Chemistry, as well as a reviewer for a number of journals. He was also a contributing editor for the ICC special issue 'clay minerals.' His research focuses on the reuse of low-quality water, the interaction of soil components, and controlling soil and water contaminants.
+201020465654
Ibrahim Gaafar has more than 25 years of experiences in the fields of irrigation water and land management and wastewater treatment. he has B. Sc. in Civil engineering then had two M.SC. in irrigation from Ain Shams University, Egypt and IAM-Bari Italy then Ph.D. in wastewater treatment using engineered wetlands from Ain Shams University, Egypt
He is working as a senior researcher at the Water Management Research Institute (WMRI), National Water Research Center (NWRC), Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) of Egypt (1996 – till now) with several leaves to work for national and international entities. He worked with FAO in Evaluation of Irrigation Improvement Projects using SIMIS Software (1997-1998) then Egyptian representative in the Water Use Efficiency Network for Mediterranean countries headed by CIHEAM-Bari for Evaluating the FAO Penman Montieth evapotranspiration equation. He joined the Lake Manzala Engineered Wetland Project as a Senior Project Engineer (2003-2007). it is a joint project among UNDP, GEF and EEAA then joined the Strategic Research Unit, National Water Research Center (2007–2011) on the "Decision Support System (DSS) for Water Resources Planning Based on Environmental Balance Project" funded by the Italian Cooperation, and the Water and Stability project (a Dutch funded project partnership between the Strategic Research Unit and CARE Egypt). at 2011 he returned to WMRI to work on several projects as a team leader or Coordinator. One of them was as a coordinator of "Management of Water and Salinity in the Nile Delta: A Cross-Scale Integrated Analysis of Efficiency and Equity Issues project". It is a joint project among IWMI, ICARDA, ARC and WMRI. It funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR). Also, he was the field team leader of several projects; the Water and livelihood Initiative (biophysical activities) with ICARDA and “Updating the evapotranspiration data using the remote sensing and satellite images project” with the National Authority for Remote Sensing and Space Sciences (NARSS). He worked as water management specialist in several projects, one of them is “Collective action and agricultural productivity in Egypt’s New Lands (Nasr canal area)” with Alexandria University and Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France. He joined NIRAS Consultant Experts (Poland Office), as an expert in irrigation modernization in EU Water Sector Technical Assistance and Reforms Support (EU Water STARS) for about one year to contribute to improve the management and the use of water resources by improving operational efficiencies of concerned stakeholders and beneficiaries. Recently he is coordinator of the canal rehabilitation and irrigation modernization projects in Fayoum and Giza Governorates. Also, he is the NWRC Lead of the JCAR-A4I Egyptian Dutch project JCAR “Assessing the impacts of irrigation improvements and innovations – a Living Lab Approach”.
He afforded lectures and training courses to several faculties and engineering high institutes, Training Center of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, Wadi Environmental Scientific Center (WESC), World Fish Center (ICLARM), the Social Development Fund, Egypt and UNEP in the field of fluid mechanics, hydraulics, irrigation networks and structures, integrated water resources management, water quality management and wastewater treatment.
Femke Schasfoort is an environmental economist with a focus on drought risk analysis and the economic valuation of ecosystem services. She is confident in using a range of economic instruments, such as cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and risk analysis. For the Dutch Delta Program and the HORIZON 2020 project IMPREX she develops a risk-based approach to estimate the economic impacts of drought for multiple sectors in the Netherlands. Other recent projects include an analysis of the socio-economic impacts of water scarcity in Egypt and monitoring the socio-economic impacts of implementing pumped drainage in Bangladesh. For the municipality of Dubai, she was involved in developing a climate adaptation strategy. For the European 7th Framework Directive project Vectors, she carried out an ecosystem service valuation study using choice experiments and travel costs methods. Her ambition is to supplement neoclassical economics theories with theories from behavioral economics to carry out sound and widely supported social cost benefit analyses. Therefore, she is using techniques as agent based modelling and system dynamics. She is an excellent team-player in interdisciplinary research and consultancy groups and adapts very well to various environments. She holds a degree (MSc) in Earth Science and Economics from the Free University Amsterdam.