Abhatoo - Centre Nationale de Documentation

The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region experiences severe scarcity, and there is a need to understand the fate of water to sustainably manage water. Well-
adapted and well-implemented water accounting (WA) provides countries and/or regions that face increasing water scarcity a sound and transparent basis for managing the scarce water resources and inform management to achieve relevant goals and targets. WA differentiates consumptive and non-consumptive water uses in space and time. The latter is a crucial element of monitoring systems, for example, to evaluate and quantify benefits and potential trade-offs that result from policies and practices aimed at improving water efficiency, productivity and sustainability. Well-adapted and well-implemented WA also provides detailed information at different, scales and institutional levels needed by potential users. To use water accounting properly for decision making, uncertainty in water accounting should be managed and communicated so that users of outputs know the level of confidence they can have in these outputs. Better information, facts and evidence from water accounting alone may not deliver a quick fix to the complex challenges in the areas experiencing increasing water scarcity. Meeting these challenges will depend also on: better governance of water resources; investments in infrastructure; adoption of new technologies and better cooperation including data sharing and dialogue between key stakeholders within and across institutions and sectors. In this regard, water auditing can add value to water accounting by placing trends in water supply, demand, accessibility and use in the broader context of governance, institutions, public and private expenditure, legislation and the wider political economy. This paper highlights the benefits of using water accounting that is multi-scalar, problem-focused and based on active stakeholder engagement in the NENA region. Typical challenges of institutionalising, operationalising and upscaling water accounting and water auditing are also highlighted alongside practical approaches to addressing and overcoming these challenges. The paper also describes the capacity development strategy and innovations that are being piloted in the NENA region. Finally, the paper lists recommended standard features of international standard water accounting systems.