Together with THESys Alumna Zeina ElZein and Amal Abdou, THESys Member Ina Säumel has published a paper in which policies toward an integrated urban water management in Egypt are proposed.
Promoting an integrated urban water management
Water scarcity is one of the main challenges facing countries in arid or semi-arid zones. Egypt has already reached absolute water scarcity. This research follows an interdisciplinary approach to propose actions and policies that promote integrated urban water management in the country. A study of Lima, Peru; Windhoek, Namibia; and Adelaide, Australia provided a set of proposed actions that can be adapted to Egypt. Interviews with key stakeholders in the water sector in Egypt validated the proposed approaches and offered deeper insights into their applicability. The research provides recommendations at the organizational and urban levels of water management. These include establishing a general organization for water management to oversee water-related organizations and ministries; alleviation of water subsidies; increasing public awareness; creating a public database for water knowledge; relying on decentralized water management when possible; and using urban design as an educational tool.
The value of these approaches is their application potential, with minor adaptations, to countries with similar or close climatic and socio-economic conditions to Egypt, such as the MENA region.
Publication
ElZein, Z., Abdou, A. and Säumel, I. (2022): Lessons learned from water-scarce cities: Proposed policies toward an integrated urban water management in Egypt. Front. Water 4:981261. doi: 10.3389/frwa.2022.981261
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