FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSMENT OF THE NATIONAL WATER SECURITY WITH APPROPRIATE INDICATORS IN EGYPT

Abstract

Water is the source of life and the main input in nearly every socio-economic activity. Egypt faces great challenges, fixed share of Nile water, imitated of groundwater, imitated of rainfall, in addition to the effect of climate change on water availability. Population rapidly increase and, with this limited water resources the gap between water resources and demand is growing. Commonly used water status evaluation approaches such Water Scarcity, Water Stress and Water Poverty indicate that Egypt water situation is getting worse under these challenges, and does not provide tools to guide or achieve improvement in water management to better utilize available resources and secure the growing demands. This is logic because all of these approaches focus on the supplied water resources volume, which is limited in our case of Egypt. Also these approaches do not say anything about water quality, water use efficiency, water productivity, etc. With the growing global Water Scarcity in many places around the world, the Water Security approach and the Water Security Index (WSI) is becoming attractive tool for evaluating and monitoring progress in water management. Water Security Index is not only a tool to estimate the current situation but we can use it also to give water mangers a tool for future strategic planning and to define measures and actions which have to be taken to enhance the water situation. The main objective of this research is to introduce methodology to evaluate water security in Egypt according to local conditions and under the above mentioned challenges and to give the water mangers a tool to be used to enhance water security. Water Security in Egypt has not been assessed or quantified before in a way that enables water managers to have