Egypt, Iraq Cooperate over Water Scarcity

Egypt and Iraq are cooperating over “water scarcity” issues, trying to optimize the usage of limited water sources, in light of the significant decline of their per capita share of water.

Egypt has been in dispute with Ethiopia for nearly a decade over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) established on the Nile River.

Iraq has been suffering from a decline in the water level of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers since 2003, as a result of the policies adopted by Turkey and Iran to change the paths of the tributaries and build giant dams.

The Egyptian-Iraqi Technical Advisory Committee on Water Resources and Irrigation held its first meeting in Cairo on Monday to discuss opportunities to boost joint cooperation of water management in order to achieve sustainable development objectives in light of the great challenges.

In March, Egyptian Minister of Water Resources, Mohamed Abdel-Aty visited Baghdad to participate in the first International Water Conference, during which he agreed with his counterpart Mahdi Rashid al-Hamdani to expedite the activation of a memorandum of understanding in the field of water resources.

Undersecretary of the Egyptian Ministry of Water Resources, Ragab Abdel Azim, who headed his country’s delegation, reviewed the water challenges facing Egypt, and the efforts that the state is currently making to confront these problems. Technical Undersecretary of the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources, Hussein Abdul Amir Bakka headed the Iraqi delegation.

They reviewed the challenges facing Egypt at the societal and governmental levels and the implementation of major projects, such as the national project for the rehabilitation of canals, the national project for the transformation to modern irrigation systems, and the expansion of the use of smart irrigation applications.

Egypt and Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding in October 2020, covering several areas of cooperation, including modern irrigation techniques, treatment, aquatic weed control, river and beach hydraulics, including water and sediment quality, institutional reform, and protecting beaches.

For his part, Bakka listed the challenges facing the water sector in Iraq, such as climatic change, declining rainfall and rising temperatures.

Bakka explained the efforts made to overcome these challenges. He discussed his country’s experience in snow monitoring in upstream countries, monitoring and communication systems of waterways, rehabilitating dams, as well as modeling and monitoring underground reservoirs.

Cairo and Baghdad agreed to establish a working group of technicians and prepare for the visit of an Egyptian technical delegation to Iraq next August to conduct several field visits. The Egyptian delegation also invited Iraq to participate in the fourth edition of Cairo Water Week, scheduled between October 24 and 28.