The Coordination Unit of the North Western Sahara Aquifer System Consultation Mechanism (NWSAS-CM), organized, on September 21-22, in partnership with the GMES&Africa project - OSS-North Africa Consortium, the second online training workshop on Earth Observation for water management and the use of the MISBAR platform as a monitoring tool for irrigated areas.

This workshop targeted the NWSAS-CM water and natural resources managers as well as the groundwater resources management technical staff from Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. It aimed to :

Present the features and services of the MISBAR platform ;
Explain the importance of these tools in estimating groundwater withdrawals for agricultural use, and
Train national stakeholders on the use of the MISBAR services, making practical demonstrations of use cases related to the NWSAS context.

The training sessions were led by Mr. Mustapha MIMOUNI, Technical Coordinator of the GMES&Africa project and made it possible for all participants to interact and to familiarize with the MISBAR platform. In addition, group works and case studies gave the opportunity to explain how Earth Observation data can be used for mapping irrigation and estimating water withdrawals.

During this meeting, the needs of end users in terms of capacity building and products and services provided by the platform, were collected with the aim of developing a management plan and a practical training plan for EO technologies best use and a sustainable and coordinated management of the NWSAS water resources.

The North Western Sahara Aquifer System (NWSAS) extends over more than one million km² and is shared by Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. Its almost-fossil water reserves amount to approximately 60,000 billion m3 including 1 billion m3 of renewable resources. Promoting sustainable management of transboundary water resources in this aquifer is a challenge that the three countries need to take up to ensure a sustainable development in one of the most frail regions of the African continent.

It is true that this region made it through maintaining a sustainable activity thanks to its adaptation to an extremely arid environment and to a wise and well-thought use of the groundwater resources, still, it is important to emphasize that this balance is, more than ever, at risk due to the heavy exploitation of the available resources. The imbalance between scarcely renewable resources and the ever-increasing demand for water, in particular for irrigated agriculture, is also exacerbated by uncontrolled withdrawals.

The use of remote sensing is a real opportunity for a better monitoring of irrigated areas and boreholes, and for providing decision-makers and water managers with useful and near real time information on the amounts of water withdrawn for agricultural use.

For the record, GMES&Africa focuses on end users and aims to support decision-making for the sustainable management of natural resources through Earth Observation products and services.

MISBAR (Monitoring Integrated Services for Best Assessment of Natural Resources), was developed by the OSS as part of GMES&Africa - OSS-North Africa Consortium and is a tool for monitoring irrigated areas based on spatial data. MISBAR provides users with decision support tools for better knowledge and management of groundwater and contributes to good governance and spatio-temporal monitoring of these resources exploitation.


Start of the 5th Desertif'Actions summit on agroecology, October 5, 2022
The Sahara and Sahel Observatory tory (OSS) is co-organizing, with the UNCCD and CARI, the 2022 session of the Desertif’Actions summit. Discussions focus on possible options that take advantage of agroecology and that emerge from recommendations collected on a global scale from civil society key players. COP 15 came up with decisions for biodiversity, climate, food security and rural development. This summit will thus, make it possible to promote them with agroecology-based solutions, to take actions and to think of a resilient and equitable future.

Mr. Nabil Ben Khatra, the OSS Executive Secretary, took the opening session to recall that this initiative fits perfectly with the Organization vision and strategy, aimed at supporting the African countries to strengthen the sustainable land management and biodiversity conservation tools, and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. He also underlined that thinking of a resilient and equitable future would necessarily involve the valuation of agroecology, as a potential and immediate solution that can be implemented to help combat desertification and drought.

Mr. Ibrahim Thiaw, the UNCCD Executive Secretary, called upon the participants to consider practical alternatives, stressing that « Combating desertification is giving a human face to all our actions. » Indeed, the populations are the number one provider of all solutions and the civil society recommendations will only confirm this.

The opening session high-level speeches brought to light the land degradation pressing issues such as desertification, biodiversity protection, adaptation to climate change and their global consequences. « Lands are the very heart of the challenges we all have to face, before it is too late », said Mr. Patrice Burger of CARI.

The Desertif’Actions summit thematic workshops will be held until October 8, and will focus on the economic development in the territories, the environmental well-being, the quality of life and the resilience to crisis situations.

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