Managing Scarce Water Resources in Agriculture in West Asia and North Africa - Restorative Redevelopment of Devastated Ecocultural Landscapes - page 445

and tankers have been made but the cost is still high for agricultural purposes. The
project to transfer water by pipelines from Turkey to the Middle East countries was
unsuccessful because of financial and political consideration. Potential for such
projects can only be realized with good regional cooperation and trust building.
As water scarcity in the region grows, the issues associated with cross-boundary
water resources become urgent and require solutions. Internationally agreed laws
and codes of ethics need to be developed to insure water rights and to open the way
for innovative projects in the region.
r ainWater h arvesting
Water harvesting provides opportunities for decentralized community-based man-
agement of water resources. Hundreds of billions of cubic meters of rainwater in the
drier environments is lost every year. This loss occurs mostly in the marginal lands,
which occupy a major part of WANA, due to lack of proper management. The devel-
opment of water harvesting systems in these areas can save substantial amounts of
water that is otherwise lost and become irrecoverable. The International Center for
Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) has demonstrated that over 50
percent of this water can be captured and utilized for agricultural production if inte-
grated on-farm water use techniques are implemented properly (Oweis et al. 1999).
However, issues of policies and socioeconomic aspects require special attention for
achieving greater success.
i mPort v irtUal W ater
Virtual water refers to the water used abroad to produce imported food. It is seen
as one of the economical solutions to water scarcity in WANA. It can be shown
that, in water-scarce areas, it is sometimes cheaper to import a commodity than to
produce it locally. Due to higher water productivity, it has been claimed that cereal
international trade reduces global crop water use by 164 km 3 (from effective rain
and irrigation) and 112 164 km 3 of net irrigation water. This represents a savings of
6 percent in global water use by crop and 11 percent in irrigation water depletion.
The problem with the concept of virtual water is that the production value is only
measured by market prices. The value of agricultural production, particularly in
poor rural areas, is not only in the market value of the product but more as social
and environmental and food security returns. All these dimensions and aspects
have great values that should be considered when including the virtual water in the
national water resources budget.
Trade of virtual water has always been necessary, but what is important is that
rural agricultural communities continue to practice agriculture and no policies on
virtual water should phase them out as a result. Relying on virtual water to feed a
nation may negatively effect the scientific advancements on improvements in the
water sector of the country. Extremely water-short and dry countries have no choice
but to import food. Other countries with less water stress have to balance increas-
ing pressure on water resources and dependency on imports. A certain degree of
food sufficiency is still a national priority, despite of the political and economic