The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is in a condition of water stress and scarcity.  While most of the region depends on rain fed agriculture, approximately 30 percent of cultivated areas in the Middle East and 11 percent in North Africa depend on irrigation.  Fresh water is limited not only for the largest water consumer, the agricultural sector, but also for domestic, industrial and tourism uses, and the maintenance of ecological integrity.

IDRC and its partners are drawing attention away from the conventional augmentation approach towards a model that considers future human needs and environmental sustainability. WaDImena advocates methods that focus on improving water-use efficiency, equity and sustainability of existing water resources.

Water demand management (WDM) may be defined as any measure that aims to:

• Improve the efficiency of water use to accomplish a specific task (e.g. technological improvements),
• Adjust the nature of the task or the way it is accomplished to use less water or less quality water (e.g. reusing wastewater),
• Shift the timing of the water flow to achieve higher efficiency gains (e.g. night-time supplemental irrigation).

WDM also considers that users change their behaviours to regulate the amount, quality and timeliness of the means in which water is accessed, used and disposed. A framework is supported to improve productive efficiency, equity (allocative efficiency) and promoting wider user-participation in decision-making.  

Why WaDImena ?

The fundamental problem is that the WDM movement is occuring without the breadth or strengthe necessary given the current water scarcity in MENA. There is a need to fill knowledge gaps, facilitate the link between research and policy and promote positive experiences for knowledge exchange, capacity development and dynamic learning among the countries.

WaDImena is a 5-year multi-funded donor programme (2004 - 2009) coordinated by IDRC to address the above challenges. The project draws on the results from a decade of IDRC partners' research and the work conducted during the WDM Forums project phase.

Active countries include Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.

What does WaDImena do?

WaDImena will contribute to effective water governance in the countries of the MENA region by promoting tools, approaches and strategies to enhance water-use efficiency, euqity and sutainability through:

• Improvements in the research and knowledge base on WDM and its associated challenges, opportunities and incentives for the practical application in specific contexts, with particular focus on women and the rural poor.
• Enhanced skills development and strengthening of individual and institutional capacities to positively affect WDM implementation (see Regional Exchange Facility and Capacity Development)
• Creation of a viable network to share experiences, foster dialogue and promote partnerships among key actors.
• Strengthened relationships and collaborative arrangements with national, regional and international water governance programmes to motivate the WDM agenda (see WaDImena Countries)

Who are our Partners?

Our financial partners include IDRC's Rural Poverty and Environment (RPE) and  Urban Poverty and Environment (UPE) Programming Initiatives, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) .