Sustainable management of scarce resources in the coastal zone

Abu Qir Bay region of the Mediterranean coast of Egypt includes Abu Qir Bay, Rosetta branch of the River Nile, Lake Edku and adjacent region bounded from the south by Mahmoudia Canal. The canal supplies the region and Alexandria City with fresh water from the Rosetta branch of the River Nile. A number of historic cities and large areas fertile agricultural land are included and are undergoing large unplanned changes. Extensive industrial, agricultural and domestic pollution in the area is an important factor contributing to deterioration of environmental conditions. The region is considered an important underutilized resource of agriculture, tourism and industrial production in Egypt. However, the shortage of institutional capabilities for planning, monitoring, assessment and pollution control in addition to lack of awareness among stakeholders, have rendered this region into a highly degraded and deteriorating environment. The objective of this work was to use modern technologies of remote sensing, GIS, modeling, indicators and surveys to properly identify inherent problems and to present an integrated plan for sustainable development that takes into account the severe limitation of water quality, shortage of awareness and shortages of institutional capabilities.

The dissemination activities were closely linked with the local networking activities and end-user involvement. At the same time, they flexibly reacted to any opportunity that became available during the project runtime. The project web server and the local workshops and meetings were the primary vehicles, but other media and mechanisms were used as well, wherever feasible. The dissemination activities went on during the entire project duration. Accordingly, the dissemination plan had to be adapted and updated several times.

This deliverable Guidelines for the socio-economic analysis on WP2 Socio-economic framework and guidelines has been established to provide methodological advice on the process of information collection. It has provided its advice to date in the form of these Guidelines, which are the one of the components of this WP2 documents package to support the socio-economic analysis in each case study. These Guidelines have been prepared including the feedback received through consultation of the case study partners. The data compilation and methodological proposal is divided in four different tasks, as it was defined in the SMART technical annex. In the population, demographic and migration policy analysis is analysed demographic aspects, including migration issues and projections. It is presented the lists of population data, which it should be mainly collected at the national, regional and municipal population census. The main source of statistical data to collect for the case study areas is the national statistic office. The data should be as similar as possible in all the case study countries, however each country has different constrains. A first collection of the census data availability shows significant differences and information gaps in the countries considered. In order to achieve the integration proposes of the SMART project, the socioeconomic analysis reference year should be 2000/01. In the point population, demographic and migration policy analysis are also proposed three different scenarios for the population forecast to 2025. Regarding the political and economic options adopted for the study areas it is analysed the pattern of economic growth as a result of the existing policies. Other objective of this part is to consider how the policies and the options for economic growth can be at the source of competing uses of water. The main objectives are to characterise the strategic and regulatory instruments at national, regional and municipal levels; and the identification and characterisation of the different levels of decision related to the water management. The aim of competing water uses task is the identification of water demands and the characterisation of the various actors and interests related with these demand. It will be also launched the principals to analyse the competition between different economic activities for the water uses. In this point it is defined the water demand scenarios. In the definition of the water demand scenarios will be considered the more important factors that is influencing the water use. Based on the characterisation of the socio-economic, policy and biophysical dynamics will be possible to determine the following scenarios: business as usual; water crisis; and sustainable water use. The purpose of the economic analysis of water resources is to bring into the WP2 the prices of water (by each economic sector), the costs among the different water users and other negative externalities, which can influence this economic analysis.

The workpackage 04 of SMART compiles analyzes and compares data used in each case study by means of a standardized database. It brings together all project specific data and stores them in several object classified fields such as socio-economic data, Telemac data and WaterWare data. The main efforts of WP04 to compile and process the data required for the individual case study applications are described in deliverable D04 on Data Compilation and Analysis. These data can be classified into two groups as: the data for WP02-Socio-Economic Analysis, and the data for Analytical Tools-WP03. The report D04.1 covers all data for both the socio-economic and the comparative policy analyses. It also addresses the compiled modelling data, which are already stored in the on-line database available on SMART website. The major output of D04.1 is the comparative analysis of the data on case studies with respect to their availability, completeness, consistency and plausibility.

The Gulf of Aqaba is one of the two northward branches to the Red Sea, shared between four countries, namely; Egypt from the west, Saudi Arabia from the east and Jordan and Israel to north. The Gulf is a semi-enclosed body of water with 180 Km long and width that ranges from 26Km in the middle to about 6 Km at its southern mouth at the strait of Tiran. The water depth in the Gulf can reach a maximum of 1828 m with an average depth of 800m. The usual features are due to the fact that the Gulf is situated in the middle of the Syria-Africa Rift Valley, which extents from the Ghab Valley in Syria to the Rift Valley of East Africa passing through the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, Wadi Araba and the Gulf of Aqaba. The semi enclosed characteristics of the Gulf of Aqaba have led to its rich biodiversity. The Gulf hosts an extraordinary diversity of coral and related marine life. However the Gulf shows limited water exchange with the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The residence time for shallow water is one to two years, while the lower mass of water experiences a three year average residence time. Also the semi enclosed nature of the environment of the Gulf of Aqaba causes the sea to particularly susceptible to pollution. Marine pollution sources include urbanization, industrialization, aquatic tourism, oil spills, solid waste, waste oil contamination, phosphate dust, air pollution from land transportation, chemical pollution from industries, thermal pollution from power plant, return flow from irrigation, pollution of the shallow, brackish water aquifer and sewage from the municipal sewage treatment ponds. If these activities are not controlled in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner environmental degradation will worsen.

The aim of this document is the development of a theoretical support to the socio-economic framework. Above are presented the main principles to be followed by the case study partners to build each socio-economic report. A substantial part of this deliverable is concerned with forecasting the changes in water demand given certain changes in the social and economic dynamics. Nevertheless, more then just a support to forecast, it is a framework to help a more exploratory approach which has the potential to provide some of the possible deviations from the expected future. The deliverable presents an introduction to the approach of the problems definition. The structure of this document is divided in the following parts: Water Demand Issues; Socioeconomic analysis concerns on SMART project; and Suggestions to a deeper analysis. The analysis of water demand issues is mostly concerned with the expected change in the demand of water, given certain levels of socio-economic changes, with special attention on population scenarios. These are based on a set of assumptions, extrapolated from current understanding of demand and its constraints. The assumptions are based on the principles to build water demands, adapted to each case study. However, the population changes and its effect on water demand are not entirely predictable, especially when it takes into consideration all the interactions between the socio-economic processes. This document also provides the procedure for estimate future water demand. The description provides additional details for implementing the water demand analysis in each case study. The water demand forecasting algorithm needs to operate on data corresponding to each case study, to each economic sector, and to each forecast year. Forecasts are devising for domestic use and non-domestic (agricultural, commercial and industrial sub-sectors) for case study regions; and for 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020, and 2025. The projection of residential water use to 2025 will be simulated using a linear-predictive model to incorporate demographic, socio-economic, and climatic variables. The projection of non-residential water use to 2025 will be simulated separately using a constant rate model incorporating water use per economic sectors. The relationships between the WP2 and other workpackages are presented in this deliverable. An interdisciplinary analysis is proposed to approach the best way to integrate the socio-economy into this study. One of the suggestions is to develop the analysis based on the integrated thematic analysis between socio-economic aspects and policy framework. In suggestions for a deeper analysis it is presented the potential improvements based on the analysis of the water scarcity management, and analysis requirements of WP2. These improvements, both thematic and methodological, are basically theoretical proposals.

Applying the SMART project multidisciplinary integrated approaches has proved quite intriguing and beneficial. To begin with, the theme on water resource availability and management is very crucial to the area of study, i.e. around Tripoli city, the 2nd largest and coastal urban complex in Lebanon, covering the main river watershed, Abou Ali, in the surrounding. Indeed, the results would have an impact on three levels: social plus administrative, scientific plus spread of knowledge and economic. At the social-administrative level, we were able to reach communities and agencies in the watershed with whom we interacted on the subject matter and supplied views on improvement of the water infrastructure. We even had the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of water pricing as a future possibility contributing to control on water demand. The water authorities also had a good share of our efforts especially exposing the futuristic scenarios and their possible outcome, from which they decided to look deeper into the approach as an aid in their projected privatisation process and improving the water management. The innovative aspect was the integration of all water users on one hand and the holistic water-shed approach , on the other. On the scientific front, the results are tremendous. Now we have a very significant database on the watershed, and it is digital. This is already available on the server of the GIS-based bureau of the Municipality of Tripoli, which supplies ready information to the different communities of the area. Moreover, the knowledge gained by the Lebanese team with the advanced water software is very valuable. It added new dimensions to both our research and applications. The interactions we had with colleague scientists from universities and NGOs has proven fruitful, where some are concerned with the outcome from a water resource management point of view, while others are more concerned with the quality aspects. This applies both to the fresh-water regime (Water Ware) on land, as well as that of the littoral (Telemac software). Certainly, we have used this added knowledge to publish some of the work contributing to the scientific community at large. This took place both in scientific journals and in meetings. The previous description on social-administrative aspects already points out to a socio-economic potential outcome, namely, the improvement in water management, i.e. better use of the resource, better control on leak points, encouraging positive interaction among different stakeholders, and even the acceptance of the possibly coming water pricing regulations. There is significant water wastage in the way things are running now. The economic outcome of using the data generated from SMART, or indeed using the advanced softwares that have generated these data and showed the future projections, e.g. what are the impacts of taking now steps that will relieve the situation, are considerable. The water authorities should be aware of the value of applying those approaches.

The obtained results on this deliverable could be divided in two parts: - Firstly, is presented a legal and administrative framework of each case study country; and based on national water scarcity indicators is highlighting the most extreme situations. - Secondly, is presented a methodology originally developed for the Comparative Analysis, which demonstrates to be fully operational in those cases with limited data availability constraints. The conceptual framework used as well as the multi-criteria analysis adopted concretely shows how participatory decision making can be handle and understood by non experts users, representing an operational approach for bridging scientific modelling and policy.

The SMART project web server is operational since the very beginning of the project, accessible under: http://www.ess.co.at/SMART/ The server area is structured in three domains: - Publicly accessible pages that are primarily aimed at dissemination; a description of the project, its objectives, milestones, the on-line accessible or downloadable public Deliverables, and a user interest registration page to help build up a common address data base are examples; direct access to data and rich imagery are designed to make the site more attractive. - Publicly accessible pages that contain useful technical background material for the project partners that is deemed of more generic interest and thus open to any and all visitors detailed descriptions of the case studies, modelling results, GIS data, and an image gallery are examples; - Restricted (user name and password) pages that are primarily geared towards the project participants and contain projects internal and administrative material. In addition, on a dedicated server the project maintains an on-line discussion forum. This is currently restricted and by invitation only. As soon as the material is considered to be sufficient (in terms of quantity and quality) the on-line discussion forum which includes a number of topics or threads, will be made public. This is also intended as an instrument for the communication with the various local, regional, and in fact a common global network of interested parties.

The Turkish case study has focused on two major problems in western Anatolia along the Aegean Sea. The first one is the case of the Gediz River Basin, neighbouring the city of Izmir, where water scarcity is a significant problem. Water shortage is due basically to competition for water among various uses (water allocation problems) and environmental pollution. There are serious institutional, legal, social and economic drawbacks, which enhance water allocation and environmental pollution problems. The second issue investigated is the sustainable management of water resources in the Izmir urban and rural area where coastal interactions are significant. The above two cases are essentially in close interaction as the inland practices of water and land management in the Gediz Basin lead to coastal problems in the Izmir Bay. Thus, the region as a whole requires analysis on sustainable management of natural resources from various perspectives. The case of the Izmir Bay was studied via the use of the TELEMAC model and the following results were obtained: - Within each TELEMAC scenario, it is observed that the pollution from the Gediz River tends to move along the coast line toward the entrance of the inner bay, while the point source pollution from the discharge points tends to cover the biggest part of the inner bay in the east-west direction. - The effect of the NW winds is to slow down the movement of the pollution from Gediz toward the entrance of the Inner Bay; yet, it still creates a pollution risk for the eastern coast of the biggest island (Uzunada) in the bay. - The scenarios also indicate that the pollution from the Cigli treatment plant tends to expand into the Inner Bay so that it can reach the Izmir port area even at the end of a very short simulation period of 1 day. The following results are derived through WaterWare (the analytical tool of SMART) scenarios run for the Gediz Basin: - Water quality management responses could not be effectively analyzed due to lack of sufficient data. This is an unfortunate situation since one of the two key problems in Gediz is water pollution. This response could only be included in the analyses in the form of low flow augmentation. - The economic efficiency of the Gediz system for water use/water supply issues cannot be evaluated due to lack of sufficient and reliable data. It is difficult to state the economic value per unit of water used in the basin. - The results of WRM scenarios indicate that irrigation demand will be affected the most in the future by water scarcity. If water scarcity occurs due to natural drought conditions, industrial water demand cannot be met due to low groundwater levels. - Changes in crop patterns do not significantly affect the irrigation demand. On the other hand, improvement of the irrigation schemes, either in conveyance systems or in the method of field irrigation, is positively reflected in the water budget of the basin. This is due to the fact that 75% of the surface waters are consumed by irrigation. The current efficiency of the irrigation schemes is in the order of 60-70%; but this figure may be increased to 90% if improvements in the irrigation systems can be realized. - Following from the above point, system reliability in scenarios with no irrigation system improvements (pessimistic scenarios) remains below 80%; whereas it increases to above 90% for Business as Usual and optimistic scenarios. - The wetland ¿Bird Paradise¿ is currently fed by the existing irrigation system. If improvements can be realized in the irrigation schemes, these will positively affect the wetland as well. - Industrial water demand is met by groundwater resources only; thus, all pessimistic scenarios lead to restrictions on industrial supplies. - The major conclusion to be derived from the available scenarios is that, if the situation in the Gediz Basin is evaluated on the basis of water budget only, the first steps to be taken for better management of the basin would be to improve the current status of the irrigation schemes by reverting to conveyance systems and field irrigation methods that minimize water losses. - The two key problems in the Gediz Basin were identified to be water allocation and water pollution problems. The analysis of both problems is hindered to a certain extent by data limitations. Yet, water allocation could be rather well analyzed as it deals with water quantity, and data on quantities are generally available. The basic limitation here is the lack of systematic data on groundwater levels and groundwater consumption. The problem of water pollution could not be investigated in depth within the scope of this project due to significant lack of systematically and frequently monitored data.

Due to its geographical position, Tunisia is an arid to semi arid country for the major part of its territory. Added to the capriciousness of the Mediterranean climate, this situation makes not only a scarce resource but also one that is unevenly distributed in space and time. During the last decade, the Mediterranean basin and specially the costal zones faced several kinds of environment degradation. The coastal zones of Hammamet were dominated by the urban and touristic infrastructure extension. We can also notice an increase in the agriculture and industry development that involves an overexploitation of water resources. Then, this development affects and aggravates the sensitiveness and the vulnerability of this fragile ecosystem. The increase of tourism and industrial activity involve conflictual consumption of water resources and area. This pressure affects the natural environment by hydrous rejects, hazardous substances, atmospheric pollution, land uses and surface and ground water consumption and supply. This is more and more emphasizing by the agriculture, industry, tourism and social activities.

This requirements and constraints report presents a comprehensive list of issues that are to be developed through the socio-economic analysis in WP02 and applied in the comparative assessment in WP10. It lists the data requirements for the methods proposed in WP03, analyses what is known about local data availability describes the resulting constraints and suggests alternative approaches where necessary.

The work conducted by FEEM, in the realization of the Dissemination Report, has been mainly based on the collection of data related to the activities carried out to disseminate and exploit the project results such as meetings, conferences, presentations, publications, and any other useful information. At the conclusion of the SMART project, every single partner has elaborated its own Dissemination Report containing a detailed summary on the activities conducted during the three-year period of the project. Such dissemination reports mainly consist of three parts: - Status of the dissemination activities of the project (description of the dissemination activities carried out since the beginning of the project); - Future plans for disseminating the results of the project (indication on how, after the conclusion of the project, the partners intend to continue the dissemination process and to publish the outcomes of the project); - Feedback (indication of the feedbacks, if any, received from the local stakeholders, relevant institutions, organisations, scientific or public community and individuals).

Deliverables

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