 while people are joining in for the meeting, just because we want to keep on time. So I'd like to welcome all of you and for this first session on the Nexus. What we are planning to do is I'm going to give you a short introduction on the context in which we are organizing this webinar series. And I will then give the floor to my colleagues who will take you through the session. So I'm Domiti Vali, I'm a coordinating regional project on implementing the 2030 agenda on efficiency, productivity and sustainability of water in the Near East and North Africa region. You see here the logo water productivity, efficiency and sustainability. And in the context of this project, we are working with eight countries from this region, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran. Obviously the topic is of interest to most of the countries of the Near East and North Africa region and many countries in the world. I mean, water scarcity is an issue shared by many. Under that project, we have three main components that we focus on. One that is on understanding better the situation of water resources on their use, using the approach of water accounting and auditing, auditing being the water governance assessment. If you're interested, we have a session tomorrow. So in case we can share with you the link in case you want to follow that session on water auditing. We have a second component that aim to understand how agriculture, the main water user can do better with the water it has. So more crop per drop. So understanding that you can potentially increase the return and by quantity of water you are using and potentially reducing the quantity of water to get more. The third one is understanding how you just inform strategic planning and knowing, accepting the fact that you have multiple strategies and policies that may have different objectives. And that's the case of water, agriculture, and energy. And that's why we have this component looking, focusing on the nexus water, agriculture, and energy because we know that the interaction and the interrelation are increasing and particularly as agriculture is, I have to depend for example, on deep groundwater resources or modern technology to power and create pressure in these pipelines. So on this, I'd like to stop here on the presentation of the project. If you're interested to follow more closely, the information will share with you the email of the project so that you can send us a message to have more information and we will put also the link of the website. And then I'd like to introduce the group, the speakers who will just take you through the session today. First we have Annette Huberli who is a senior scientist with the Stockholm Environmental Institute. We will have also Yusef Hamdoula who is a junior scientist with the KTH, KTH which is a Royal Institute of Technology of Stockholm in Sweden. And then we have Francesco Fuzunerini who is also associate professor of KTH and Francesco, I will give him the floor he will act as a facilitator for this session. So I wish you a very good webinar and I look forward to hearing the presentation as all of you do. So Francesco, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you Domitile and thank you everyone for joining today in this webinar series that is being organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization. A bit of introduction on the webinar series that starts today. As a broad objective is to share best practices and give an understanding of what the terms nexus mean and in this case we will especially look at the nexus between water, food and energy resources. Then in this series we will look at how to manage and identify nexus challenges but also once one identifies those challenges how to find solutions to those challenges and to find solutions which tools can be used to quantify and analyze those solutions and then use them in policy and in decisions. And throughout the webinar series we will draw from expertise in different case studies with a special focus given also the focus of the project in the Near East, North Africa region. Domitile started introducing the series but just to recap today is the first section in which we look at the identified nexus challenges with some specific examples that you will see. The next one that is two weeks from now we will focus more on nexus solutions and I focus even more on the examples of Jordan and Morocco that are two focus country in the project that Domitile introduced. The next two sessions we will begin in other case studies and best practices looking at Lebanon, Maghreb and West Africa. And then we will return with the fifth part of this webinar series really looking at what the tools can do to support decision making in the nexus process. But yeah, without further ado I'll leave the word to my colleague Annette Rupert Lee from the Soco Environmental Institute. Thank you Francesco and thank you Domitia for the introduction to the series. As noted on the previous side we're open to hearing from other colleagues. I think we might be privileged to hear from our colleagues in Iran for a sixth session of this webinar series. So please know we're open to hear from all of you. I'm excited to see the enthusiasm in the number of people who are interested in listening to us today. So for today what we really like to dig into is understanding a little bit more about the nexus and sharing with you one particular approach to explore the nexus that we used in the context of the project with FAO looking at Morocco and Jordan. And then actually get right into some applications of identifying nexus challenges, looking at different scales. So starting with a subnational scale with the Zeus masa in Morocco then moving to a national scale in Jordan and then looking transboundary in the context of the Northwestern Sahara aquifer system in Northern Africa. And then we'd actually like to brainstorm with you. We'd like to learn from you as well. So we'll start out by, I will talk a little bit about the nexus and what value the exploring the nexus brings, what it does and doesn't do. A little bit about the methodology we used in the context of this water sustainability project. And then I'll hand over to Yousef who will showcase the implementation of this methodology in the various case studies. Francesco, I might need you to do the slide. So starting out with what is the nexus? I imagine most of you know what the nexus is and but I'd like to talk a little bit about the value of exploring the nexus. So next slide. So what is the nexus? I mean, there are many nexi out there. The one that we're focused on is really looking at the nexus between water, food and energy. And in particular, we think about water supply, obviously for domestic purposes, but it plays a role in food production. But in that food production, it can also say the use of fertilizers and pesticides can lead to contamination of the water. So there's some feedback loops between food and water. Similarly, water can provide hydropower, but energy power plants often need water for cooling purposes. So how do we look at the interconnections between these sectors that are often in separate ministries, separate disciplines. And we're typically not trained to think about these, the implications between and the interactions between these different sectors. Next slide. So Francesca will guide us through, we'll have different brainstorming interactions with you along the way. Yes, and to do that, we would like to, as you are quite a few people, to hear your opinions and answer some questions in Mentimeter. So for those of you that have not used Mentimeter, you can go on your phone, on your computer, any device with internet to menti.com. You will be asked the code, and you can enter this code, 1355891. And then you can leave it open actually, because then the next questions will appear. So you will not have to enter again the code. So the first question is, in which category do you most identify with, within the Wefnexus? So some of you might be working with the Nexus, I imagine, but what is your, if you have one, what is your primary expertise? Please, can you wait for us until we can connect through the portal in a minute? Yes, so wait a little, Francesca, so that they can connect with the, with the telephone. Yes. So, in fact, the system automatically between the responses of one and the other. But go ahead, connect with them. So wait one minute for everyone to answer. We already have 30 people, and up to now majority with water as an entry point, but we have also good representation in food energy and environment. So maybe Francesca, maybe you can repeat for you have some new comments. So maybe just repeat your indications while people are feeling, because you have a new focus. So anyone that just came, you can go online at menti.com on any device, add this code when asked and answer this question. So which category do you most identify with, within the Nexus? Of course, these are not all the sectors. It's a subset that we focus on today, but just to understand where people are coming from. Okay, interesting. We already have around 70 answers. Maybe I'll just wait two, three seconds more and then I'll go to the next question that will appear on your screen in the same one that you answered this one. But I'm really pleased to see that we have people from all sectors that we discussed today. Yeah, that's a good sign. Yes. And the second question is, if before in your work life, in your research life, have you ever had the chance to implement and look at the Water Energy Food Nexus approach? This looks much more equal than before. Yeah, this is interesting. Okay, this is much faster. We already have 70 answers. So hopefully we will cover the interests for both people that have worked before with the Nexus and those that are new to the concept. Exactly. Okay, you can keep answering, but I'll go back to the slides and pass back the word to Annette. Thank you, Francesco. Yeah, I mean, part of the reason that we're doing the work with FAO is a larger goal of achieving sustainable development goals. And it'd be easy to kind of look at the sustainable development goals in their strict categories. Goal six, focus on water. Goal two on food and goal seven on energy. But in fact, it doesn't take much interrogation to find that in fact, these goals are interacting with many of the other goals that if we want to reduce poverty, you really need sufficient water, energy, and food access. For economic growth, you need access to these. To have biodiversity, a sustainable ecosystem, you also need to consider how we are obtaining adequate food, energy, and water. So it's important to think about achieving sustainable development goals and achieving sustainability broadly, the need to look at how these sectors intersect with almost every dimension of human wellbeing. Next slide. So one approach, I know this looks very complicated to this though, is to start thinking about the cross impacts between, within each of these goals are a set of targets. And to sort of think through methodically, how does achieving this target intersect with achieving another target? And so what this matrix is showing us here is where it's gray, it's really achieving this target has no impact on achieving another target. Where it's green, achieving this target, say, sufficient food also contributes to reducing poverty. There's positive interactions between achieving goals. Where the nexus comes into play is where we start to see achieving this goal can have negative impacts on achieving a different goal. So you could think about, you want to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions. So let's introduce additional hydropower can have negative consequences on irrigation and food production. So a lot of our work is trying to have people think outside the silo that you're trained in or your ministry is working within. And not all nexus interactions are negative. So we don't need to look at everything. We need to focus on where the, there's potential for negative consequences. Next slide. Another way of thinking about this is what drives us often let's say reactively to do something about the nexus is, so we can be proactive and look at an SDG cross-impact matrix, but often we end up looking at the nexus because of two primary reasons. There's a scarcity of a resource or a threat. So for example, in terms of scarcity, if there's not sufficient water, that has implications in terms of hydropower production, let's say cooling water for power plants or our ability to produce food. And similarly, a threat can occur in those, in those same kind of situations where we're using water for production of biofuels at the cost of not having adequate food production. All of these are exacerbated by climate change where we can have extreme events, increased frequency and intensity of those extreme events and it can impact food production, both irrigated agriculture and rain-fed agriculture. All of these can lead to crises or conflicts. So sometimes the nexus comes into play because of a crisis and our goal through this series is to help us think more proactively. So we don't get to the point of a conflict or crisis, but think more proactively around the nexus to prevent them from happening. Next slide. And so in terms of thinking proactively, how can we plan? How can we develop policies and infrastructure that addresses some of these potential negative consequences of planning in silos rather than thinking coherently? And what we're suggesting here is not to create a new ministry of everything, but rather preserve the existing ministries but find ways for ministries to talk across what are now mostly silos and develop more coherent policies. And what do we mean by policy coherence? It's really looking at the potential for conflict in working in isolated ways and actively coordinating across ministries. If I'm planning a hydropower, if I'm planning a new irrigation perimeter, let's find ways to talk to each other so that we can play out those implications, look for synergy, look for cooperation across common objectives. Next slide. So are these interliquidges already transparent to policymakers? I think we would argue in some cases, yes. In some cases, we know that there's tension between hydropower and irrigation. But I think more often than not, we find that these nexus interlinkages are in fact not really explored across ministerial boundaries. So that you are often setting goals and policies that directly and negatively impact another ministry and that we find even across borders and transboundary situations, this also comes into play that not really understanding the more regional impacts that large-scale infrastructure or policies that involve subsidies of particular, let's say pricing of goods can make a big impact. Also often lost in all of this is the role of ecosystems and how ecosystems profoundly support our water, energy and food access. So it's really important that we start to think proactively and find ways to speak to one another across ministerial boundaries. Next slide. So what we found in our work is that there really is value in doing nexus assessments that they can really facilitate dialogue between sectors and find a joint way of prioritizing issues. That it really can lead to ideas around cooperation that haven't come up before. So if I can operate hydropower differently that allows food production and food security either within my own country or in a downstream country, let's find ways to collaborate. My security impacts your security very often. So it's important that we find ways that we help each other become water, food, energy and ecosystem secure. But that you can find, there's ways to optimize resources when we think across sectors that wouldn't be apparent otherwise. And really, I think ultimately the nexus policies and nexus investments are of high priority as we look towards an increasingly uncertain future. We think about climate change already is having very severe impacts across the world in ways that I, in my career, would have not imagined in my own country where I speak from right now, wildfires, flooding, flood events, hurricanes, are radically changing the world that we live in. And on top of all of that, we layer what we're currently living through in terms of a pandemic. So I think this ability to think across sectors is of increasing importance. Next slide. So I'd like to briefly run by you one method that we found particularly insightful in our work in Jordan and Morocco. But throughout this series, we are going to listen to a number of other methods that are also equally useful. We'll hear from Lebanon, West Africa, North Africa and Iran just to get us started. So next slide. So I have to say this project has been really fun for me personally because it allowed us to combine two different methods, robust decision support that really recognizes sort of deep uncertainty in the world, together with a UN ECE, nexus methodology. Both of these are participatory in nature, but really emphasize, I think, different aspects of the nexus. And so I mentioned the robust decision support really looking at deep uncertainty, but co-development of scenarios and co-development of models with stakeholders to make sure that there's buy-in into the process and transparency in the quantitative approaches that we take. The UN ECE method really brings stakeholders together in an interdisciplinary way, qualitatively identifying the linkages between sectors and identifying potential solutions. Quantitative models are often also used and really exploring explicitly the benefits of cooperation and thinking about nexus. Next slide. So the conventional planning can be problematic. Often, even one scenario is explored, maybe three scenarios explored, low, medium, and high, for example. But it fails to consider the possibilities of the future. And in fact, the future is, as we know, as we've lived through this last year, we know it's not predictable or well-behaved. And so the point of doing robust decision support is really to explore the future that we cannot predict. So it could be much higher than we're expecting or much lower than we're expecting. So it's really trying to recognize we can't predict the future. What do we do without uncertainty? How do we find robust or resilient policies and infrastructure in the face of such deep uncertainty? Next slide. So more specifically, what we did in the context of Jordan and Morocco was we started with what we call a problem formulation process where we identified the key stakeholders in Jordan and Morocco and we worked with them to identify what are the goals that each stakeholder has? What are the deep uncertainties that we face? And what are the strategies, meaning policies, behavioral chain, infrastructure that we have available to try to achieve those goals given these deep uncertainties? We took that information, developed a broad set of scenarios, thousands of scenarios in fact, and created a quantitative model. Sometimes in the context of this work, we use Weep or Leap or we do customized software in the context of the work we did in Jordan and Morocco. It was a combination of those tools and we'll go more deep into the tool aspect in our next webinar in two weeks. But basically ran these models and then used a visualization tools to make that complex set of information more accessible to technical and non-technical people. And the goal ultimately then is to use that information to identify robust policies and infrastructure that we can then act on. It's an iterative process. So each time we run the models, we share with stakeholders, it helps them explore deeper options and we do some iterations. What if we did this instead of that? So we're in the middle of that process right now, we don't have the answers, but it's been a pleasure working with colleagues in Jordan and Morocco along the way. So with this, I'd like to hand over to my colleague, Yusuf, who will talk through some of the examples that we're gonna share. I forgot to mention, please, if you have questions and comments along the way, can you put them in the chat? And at the end, we're going to come back to those those questions and have a discussion. So please at any point along the way, feel free to share your thoughts. We'd like to hear from you. Yeah, so hello everyone. I hope everyone can see my screen now. Yes, very well. Thank you. Thanks, so thanks Annette and Francesco and Domitiel for the intro. My name is Yusuf Almulla from KTH and it's a pleasure to be with you today to share some stories and lessons learned from different applications of the Nexus in selected cases studies in the NENA region. As Annette mentioned in her presentation that one of the powerful aspects of the Nexus that it can be applied into different scales. And in this tour, I would say we will move from a sub-regional case in Seuss Massa in Morocco to a national level in Jordan to a transboundary or a regional level in the Northwestern Sahara Aquifer system. So let me start by the first case and the Seuss Massa. For those who are not familiar with Seuss Massa, let me give a quick introduction for this important province in Morocco. It has a total area of 27,000 kilometers and it's home for about 2.5 million people. Half of them are in rural areas and they rely on agriculture as one of the main activity, if not the main activity in the province. And the importance of Seuss Massa for Morocco is really significant because it contributes to 7% of the GDP. It's the place where most of the high value agricultural products are being cultivated. And the agricultural sector is employing about half of the workforce in Seuss Massa. So it is more or less a very important socioeconomic activity in Seuss Massa, which is contributing to the welfare of the province itself, but also to the Moroccan GDP. The first step in the analysis, when we started the nexus approach was to do some sort of a literature review and understanding of what are the key challenges. And of course we came up with a plenty of challenges or issues that have been identified even before we start this analysis. But most of these issues have been sectors centered. So for example, there are a lot of issues that have been identified from the agricultural perspective and from the energy perspective and from the water perspective. And very few had some sort of interlinkages and understanding of the impact beyond their sectors. So we started by that entry point. Okay, let's move from these sectoral challenges and issues that we see a few examples of them here. Like the, if we take for example, the agricultural sector trying to cope with a growing demand, especially for the high value crops that are used for exports and generation of revenue. This is assuming that we have the available water resources for this particular activity. While the other sectors, for example, the energy are also considering some other aspects and other activities and facing the challenges of increasing demand for pumping, increasing demand also because of the desalination that's coming online soon. And on top of all of that, we have the water scarcity, which is a common problem not only in Susamah Sanat, only in Morocco, but in the entire Nina region. So how to move forward? The next step was, okay, now we have couple of sectoral issues, each sector understands and knows better what are they facing in terms of problems. Now, how to communicate this, how to generate some sort of nexus dialogue between the sectors. So we, in this process, we used a number of tools. The first one, as also Annette highlighted in her presentation, is the participatory nexus workshop. And this is one of the pivotal parts of the analysis and also the UNEC methodology that had been implemented in this case, where we bring people from different sectors together, different ministries, the private sector, academia, all of them to set together and to go through the mapping of the nexus challenges that we will show and talk about in the coming slides. And after doing these mapping, after understanding what are we are facing, then we all set together and say, okay, what are our priorities in the next step and which issues or which challenges we would like to focus on first and then how we can coordinate and join our efforts to address these challenges and issues. So the first workshop that you see some pictures of focused on the identification of the nexus challenges and doing this exercise where you see all these lines between different sectors. Here is an example that I would like to go through quickly related to the water scarcity and droughts. We know that droughts or at least in the Seuss-Massa case are becoming more frequent and this is affecting the agricultural land and increasing the demand for irrigation, not only existing or delegated areas, but also the rain-fed areas are facing the risk that they will soon shift to be irrigated, which is additional demand for irrigation. And this is of course adding to the stress of the irrigation and the already over-exploited water resources, which calls for basin management and coordination. When we are facing over-exploitation, which means that the water table levels are going lower, we need to maybe pump from a larger distances and this is again calling for more or demanding for more energy to be available for these activities. Since most of the current pumping happening using fossil fuel-based techniques, either butane for the standalone applications or getting electricity from the grid, which is again being generated by fossil fuels. So this is affecting the environment and generating emissions that are harming the environment and also having negative impact on the ecosystems and of course affecting also the biodiversity. The increase in the energy demand means increasing the cost of the products and at the end it's affecting the revenues of the farmers. So as we can see, the water scarcity challenge is not a water problem only, it doesn't affect the water sector only but it impacts those beyond the water sector and requires first a deep understanding by all the partners, by all the stakeholders, by all the sectors and secondly, it requires coordinated planning and coordinated actions by everyone to be able to address this challenge adequately. Another example from the energy demand and all the energy sector and we also did a similar mapping of the interactions and the impacts of these challenges on different sectors that due to the limited time I will skip this and focus on another example in the other case. So after mapping different challenges, not only the ones that I showed, these are just a few examples but we had plenty of these challenges. Then we set to an important stage which is, okay, now what are our priorities? What do we need to prioritize as Seuss-Massa, not the water sector and Seuss-Massa, not the agricultural sector, but all of us, what are our priorities in the next period? So we used a similar approach with Mentimeter that we tried altogether at the beginning of the session and here are the results. And so water scarcity and drought was the priority number one, then the energy sufficiency and independence and then agricultural productivity and lastly, but not least the water quality and the need for desalination. So this kind of a common understanding now made the picture clear for everyone where are our priorities and where our efforts should focus and what are the steps that we need to take to address these challenges. In the next session, session number two, that will be I think in two weeks time, my colleagues will take us through the solution part and how we take these nexus challenges to the next phase. But now let me move to the next case study to Jordan. And here we, again, let me give a quick background about the challenges that are apparent in Jordan. So we have 90% of the population in urban areas and a city like Amman is being crowded and populated and high dense population, which makes you just stress on different resources, water, food and all of that. Jordan is one of the lowest classified as the country has the lowest water availability per capita and just to give some numbers and some to have this in perspective. So the threshold for water scarcity is about 500 cubic meters per capita per year. The renewable resources in Jordan are less than 100 cubic meters per capita per year. So it's really an important challenge and an issue in Jordan. Food insecurity is another aspect. So 13% of the households are vulnerable to food insecurity. When we look at the energy, it's another challenge that the government of Morocco is, sorry, of Jordan is facing because it relies on imports, on fossil fuel imports. And this consumes about 40% of the government's budget or 20% of the national GDP. So now again, how to move from the sectoral perspective and challenges to the nexus perspective. Here, again, we implemented the same approach to go with the participatory workshop and to do the mapping of different nexus challenges and to reach to the level where we identify the priority challenges and key actions that we would like to take in the next steps. So if I would like to highlight a few examples of the mapping exercise that we did with Jordan, the first was related to the water scarcity. And since I talked about it or give an example from the case of Morocco, let me go to the other challenge that was identified in Jordan. So agricultural productivity and to just to quickly walk together through this, about 70% of the planted area in Jordan is used for water-intensive crops, such as bananas, etc., and others, which makes irrigation account for 60% of the total water use in Jordan. This is a huge and in many cases is coupled with inefficient irrigation techniques, which is adding another layer of complexity. To be able to produce more, the use of fertilizer is growing and there is a tendency to increase this into the future, which is good in some sense. It can maybe help in improving the agricultural productivity, but of course it's affecting the water quality. And these conditions of the agricultural sector affecting not only the water quality, but also it's over-exploiting the water resources. And I just mentioned that Jordan is facing a challenge related to the water and it's considered one of the lowest water availability, country with the lowest water availability per capita. And of course, when we talk about these issues or the increase in the agricultural productivity, then we should take in consideration that additional energy would be required for either harvesting processes or post-harvesting processes. And to give an indication for the energy production or the energy use for food production and pumping of water has been estimated at 12 gigawatt hours in Jordan. The use of fertilizers, as I mentioned, is affecting the water quality, but it also affects the soil salinity, which in turn is affecting the agricultural productivity in a negative way. To improve the water quality, there are plans to use more energy to be able to pump from lower water levels and also there are plans for water treatment. Al-Samara is a great example for wastewater treatment, but it's of course, it's generating significant amount of its energy internally, but it still requires some sort of energy. The desalination, the project is also adding another layer. The supply of water in Jordan is amazing. Water is moving from different parts to different locations, the supply and the demand. So that's a huge pumping water that need to be taken in consideration and plan in a very coordinated way between the agriculture, the water and the energy sector, especially if we take in consideration the future growth of this activity. And all of that should not, of course, affect or we should not forget the impact on biodiversity and the degradation of the biodiversity. So as we can see in this example, the Nexus challenges are deeply interlinked. The uncoordinated actions may lead to unsatisfactory results, if not to unintended consequences on other sectors. So that is the importance of having these kind of mapping, this importance of having this kind of a dialogue between different sectors to be able to reach to this kind of understanding and prioritizing. Sorry, the Nexus challenges that have been identified and prioritized in Jordan, again, water scarcity and drought was at the top of the list, then agricultural productivity, water quality and the shift to energy independence. As my colleague Annette mentioned that we are still developing the analysis and this is work in progress. And in the coming session, we will talk more about the other activities related to the modeling exercise and the solutions part of the analysis. I would like to take the opportunity to talk here about the one example from the regional perspective and this study that was developed in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission of Europe UNICE, Global Water Partnership and a number of local stakeholders like the Sahara and Sahel Observatory OSS. And this study had been developed between 2016 to 2020, the final report was released. So we have at least a full story that we can go through together. The Northwestern Sahara Aquifer, again, to give some sort of a background for those who are not familiar with this important water aquifer. It extends over one million kilometers square, 70% or close to 70% of its area is in Algeria. That significant part is also in Libya and Tunisia. Sorry. Okay, I thought there was a question. Close your microphones, please. I think there are some people with their microphone on. Yeah, so I was saying that it extends of over one million kilometers square. So it's really a huge aquifer. If we look at the Tunisian part, although the Tunisian share is about 8% of the SAS region, when we compare this 8% to the national territory of Tunisia, it makes about 50% of the Tunisian area is lying over this aquifer. So it is important for all the countries, not only for Algeria. The population is about 4.8 or almost 5 million inhabitants. 70% are living in rural areas. So the access to the resources, the connection to the electricity is also one of the challenges that should be taken in consideration. As I said, it's a massive groundwater resource. It has 60,000 billion cubic meter of fossil water reserves. However, the recharge rates are very low compared to the withdrawals. So we have 1 billion cubic meter per year of recharge level, but the withdrawals are three times higher. So 3 billion cubic meters have been withdrawn in 2006. And this trend is expected also to increase in the future. So it's really facing a great issue of over-exploitation and agriculture is the main user of water in the Northwestern Sahara Aquifer Basin. Again, as we started from the sectoral perspective, each sector again has their own plan and their own identification and perspectives of the nexus issues or before going to the nexus of the issues and the challenges that they are facing. And this table gives an example of different perspectives from different sectors. So for example, the water sector is facing the challenge or would like to reduce the vulnerability and the dependence of economic activities on the groundwater resource. I mentioned agriculture, but also industry is also relying on this groundwater resource. If we look at the energy, for example, 70% of the population I mentioned, they are in rural areas, but the security of supply and the electricity, the security of supply of electricity in the rural areas is a challenge. So especially in the Algerian part where a great population, great number of the population is in the southern part where they are far away from the national grid and the connection to the grid is a challenge for them. So they are relying on standalone systems for their agricultural purposes and also relying on standalone or mini-grids to be able to supply their even domestic needs of electricity. For the food perspective, managing the increasing water demands and reducing the irrigation losses, knowing that 70% of the irrigation techniques are relying on surface irrigation still and the contribution of drip irrigation is very limited in the region. The next step was to take these sectoral perspective into different transboundary workshops and what we call the nexus dialogues that starts by the first transboundary workshop that brings people from different sectors from different countries. So we had, I think, over 80 participants from the different sectors in the three countries and where we work together on identification of these nexus challenges. The next level was to do the analysis by the different experts in the different areas, energy, agriculture and water and then coming back at the National Consultation Workshop to show the preliminary results of the nexus solutions and also to work with the stakeholders on the identification of the sectoral implementation, how we can take these nexus solutions into reality and who can contribute to the implementation phase. And then the feedback that had been gathered from these National Consultation helped improve the analysis in different angles and prepare the team for the second and the last transboundary workshop where we focused on the packages of solutions and the cross-sectoral goals. If we see in these pictures, here we did a slightly different technique of mapping of the challenges and instead of looking at all the sectors together, we rather decided to go and look into the impacts from two sectors in each time. So energy to water and then water to energy and here land use or agriculture on water and water on land use. And at the end, putting all these interactions together to come up with a summary table that shows all the interactions from different sectors on different resources. So to be able to read this table, we look at the impact that each sector will have in each of these columns, the water sector, how it impacts the energy resources, how the water sector impacts the food resources, and so on. And if I would like to take a few examples, so the energy sector is affecting the food resources. So the challenges in food production in remote areas where energy access is difficult are expensive. So as I mentioned, 70% are rural areas, but those rural areas are not well connected to the grid. So the food production is facing these challenges of how we can supply the energy required to practice or to get our needs of pumping for different irrigation activities. And if we look at another example from the food sector, increasing energy demand for multiple use and new demands for water desalination and the treatment since the quality of water is facing challenges for different reasons, then this is bringing the question of wastewater treatment. This is bringing the questions of water desalination. Here we're talking about brackish water desalination, so how much energy we need for that and how we can supply this energy and so on. Then the next step was to develop the analysis and look for different solutions, for different cases, for different challenges. And here we had three levels of analysis or three types of the analysis. The first type was the qualitative analysis that was looking at these challenges and seeing how they are affecting different resources and what can be done collectively by all the sectors to be able to mitigate these risks and challenges. The other part was the qualitative analysis and the role of modeling was also apparent in this analysis where we try to select a few questions that have been of interest for the stakeholders throughout this analysis and try to develop a model that builds on some of the existing tools that they have to be able to quantify the benefits of cooperated actions between different sectors. Then of course the participatory consultation workshops and the Nexus dialogues that have been carried out not only in these workshops but the continuous consultation with OSS, with the other local partners and the different ministries both supported the qualitative analysis and the quantitative analysis. And all these together helped us to reach to a number of Nexus solutions that we tried to put together into these 15 Nexus solutions and package them in a way that tackles different sectors but at the same time it will benefit multi-sectors if they are considered or developed in a way that all the sectors can get the benefits and also contribute to the implementation. And let me take an example to make this clear. So for example, one of the solutions that have been identified in the course of this project is upscaling the use of non-conventional water resources through desalination, wastewater and drainage water treatment. As I mentioned that the degradation of the water quality is bringing the question of desalination. Another example improving the reliability of the electricity grid in rural areas. And this can number one help to address the challenge related to the food security that I mentioned before, but also it will help to improve the integration of renewables if we have a better connected grid in these regions where the solar radiation are high and have a better potential for solar energy. So who can now implement these actions? We try to be specific and we try to use the opportunity that we have all the sectors together to take this one step further, not only identify the next solutions but also to have some sort of ownership and responsibility towards these actions. So if we take for example, the solution number five, which is related to the non-conventional water resources, we see that the sector or the institution that will take the lead here as the ministry of the water resources. Here I'm giving an example of Algeria and the others and also the national office for irrigation and drainage. So those two have been identified by the stakeholders that they can lead the implementation of this Nexus solution and others can be as supporting agencies that can help in the implementation of this and so on for the other examples and all the other Nexus solutions. And this is an important thing that we don't leave the analysis and the entire Nexus approach without identifying the sectors, without identifying clear responsibilities for each of the institutions or the agencies. So we move from just identifying the Nexus challenges and the solutions to having some sort of ownership, to having some sort of an action plan that can be implemented by the ministries or the agencies in order to have these in the real life. Sorry, Yusef, can you wrap up in five minutes? So there was one. Yes, sure, sure. Perfect, take it. The other element that I would like to quickly go through is the quantitative modeling that was developed in this study. And as I mentioned, we build on the existing model. So what we had in the basin was a model that focused on the water perspective, but the energy dimension was not so apparent. So the analysis focused on developing that to be able to estimate and to address a number of questions that have been identified with the stakeholders. And this took a GIS based approach. So we had an understanding of different dimensions and characteristics in different locations. I mentioned that we looked into different nexus questions that have been identified with the stakeholders moving from the agricultural activity to the water demand, the energy demand, and then to the electricity supply and how we can supply the required energy demand. Just to give some sense of the results or what this modeling can help us or help us. So we were able to estimate or model the irrigation water demand for different countries, the three countries that for each of the province for different type of agricultural products and also to explore the impact of improving the irrigation technique, how much this will help us or how much saving and water demand we will have. Moving to the energy demand, we explored how much energy would be required for pumping, sorry for desalination and how much energy would be required for pumping and what will happen if we will accept different levels of salinity, different levels of TDS, how much we will save in terms of energy requirements. The next question that we tried to look into is the competitiveness of PV and moving to renewables. At which cost renewables, mainly solar PV will be competitive. So we explored different capital costs and also where this will start appearing first. So where we can, and this is of course based on different parameters related to the agricultural activity, the water demand, the availability of the energy resources and so on. Lastly, we looked into, okay, now we have a very subsidized energy sector and the subsidized fossil fuel products and allowing for solar to come into the picture maybe will be a challenging thing. So there is a competition between the capital cost of solar and the fuel subsidies. So where should the policy makers focus and where they should look if they would like to make solar competitive? And we realized that the capital cost, the drop in the capital cost of PV has more to do to make solar competitive than reducing the fossil fuel subsidies in the region. And this shows some sort of this dynamic. So whenever the CapEx level change, we see a significant drop in PV compared to the change when the fuel level changes. So this was kind of some sort of the insights that we extracted from this modeling activities and of course it has the room for further development to be able to address other questions in the future. Let me conclude by some of the takeaway messages. So as we discussed Annette and myself, the water energy agricultural framework is important to ensure the sustainable management of the water resources and also on other resources as well. The complexity of the challenges requires active stakeholder engagement. And as we go to a larger scale from sub national to the national to the regional, the involvement of those stakeholders is getting more and more importance and adding additional values that will be difficult without their involvement and engagement. The Nexus framework can be applied at different scales and this is what we tried to show in the selected cases studies. The Nexus modeling is an important tool that yes, it has the challenge that it is data intensive and it requires a lot of inputs, but it helps to bring valuable insights for the policymakers to draw the future strategies for the sustainable development of these sectors together. That's all what I wanted to share. Sorry for taking too long. And yeah, over to you Francisco. Thank you, Yusef. A very, very interesting presentation showing a lot of examples. Actually now, we know it's slightly uncommon for a webinar, but we would like a bit for you to discuss in breakout groups which type of Nexus solutions you encounter in the countries where you work in. Sorry, Nexus challenges. And this is also to give a bit of a flavor of the type of very initial work that is done in all these case studies where stakeholders sit together and try to understand which type of challenges that are cross-sectors are present in the region, in a country of work. So to do so, we will assign you, you will be automatically assigned in a room of around six people, and then we will take you back automatically after around 10, 15 minutes. And what we would like you to do there is, well, it's just nice to know the other people in some of the other people in this meeting, but ideally you could spend the first two, three minutes just reflecting by yourself, thinking if you can imagine any challenge in the Nexus in your country. So any challenge that involves more than one sector, like the ones that we saw. So that involves more than one sector between the energy, the water, and the food land sector. It could be a challenge that is starting in one sector. So let's say if it starts in an example, it could be a new hydropower project that starts in the energy sector, but then of course it has Nexus implication. This hydropower project might divert water from agriculture and of course uses water that could be used in other ways. Then you can, if you want, share with the other people in your meeting room some, the possible challenge that came into your mind and see if you have any commonalities in between the countries that you have in that room. And yeah, unfortunately we cannot make rooms by language. So it might be that there will be mixed languages, French, English, maybe Arabic in the same room. Feel free to just present in the language you're most comfortable with. And anyway, we will bring everyone back in 10 minutes. So I'll ask Giro from FAO if please he can divide us in rooms and also us moderators will pop in different rooms from time to time. Okay, so I assigned the breakout rooms and then everyone gets in a pop-up window saying that accept or something. So please accept once it's assigned. And I will copy these instructions in the chat. So please, if you want to participate to the breakout room discussion, just accept the invitation you will have in your screen and you will be automatically allocated to one of the rooms. So let me start. I am Mohamed from Bahrain. Bahrain, okay. Yeah, and I work in the water resource management unit. Yeah. Yeah, I'm Mohamed. I'm a senior guard and I'm agronomist. Currently I work on storage, using for products, bio guys and using the product to fertilize the lines for agriculture. So I work on the both of the, and it's just a topic. Lovely, lovely. And also if you are related to our field also because we are part of the National Oil and Gas Authority. We were also working on capturing, but not gas, capturing carbon and using it to fertilize, yeah, very nice. I agree, yeah, it's fine. So, well, for those of you who know what you are going to say. So, like the first question is to identify an important natural science control zone. I can say that the most, I could talk about energy. So I can talk about food. I could talk about water, so I don't know which could be the most important also. It's on a cycle we have, all they use. So if you want to let you start in, then I could work on it. Yeah, yeah. For us to be frank, I think water is very important because all our water resources are not natural. We always use desalination factories. So technically we don't have a water source. Even for underground water is diminishing or aquifires are way below the sufficient amount that we require per year. But as you said, they are all linked together. We produce our water using gas, which is energy. Yes, you need water to add the codes to the digester and we need the walls to fertilize the land for production and keep foods. Indeed, indeed, it's a cycle. Yeah, that's why I talk about the cycle. Okay, if you think that the water could be the challenge, the most challenge, okay? Yeah, I can say that. So water, we can have water, but I don't know if we can have enough of produce to have energy. So we don't have enough, we don't have enough energy in Africa. And China is still being a problem for living. Yeah, fortunately for us to say that, sorry to say that, but for us, energy is a bit of a lesser problem because we use natural gas and we do produce natural gas. But I understand that one of our foresight for the future that our production of natural gas is not enough to cover the requirements of Bahrain. So we understand also that here that Eric City, if that's gone, water is gone, food is gone directly, indeed. Okay. I'm Camilla, I was listening to your conversation, very interesting. I'm actually from KTH in Sweden. So I've been part of the Peace Power Project as a model engineer, but actually I come from Colombia. So I wanted to mention some cases because I think it's a really different landscape. Right? So for example, in Colombia, we have pretty much abundant resources of water. Right? Yeah, next to me. So, but then also we can, we have also been facing problems, for example, in how to use those resources. So for example, we tend a lot to make this huge hydropower power plants, right? And when they are functioning, they are quite nice, they are quite stable, they help to balance the grid and supply energy quite stable and nicely and reduce the cold use. So we reduce emissions and so on. And also they can provide some water needs for irrigation, human consumption and so on. But for example, we recently had a case where we were building one of the biggest hydropower stations in the country and it was a complete disaster. So basically the project had some issues when it was being finished and basically the reservoir almost broke. So they had to evacuate an entire zone. So this has major concerns about land use, about societal problems because a lot of people get displaced from their communities and so on. So I just wanted to raise that point because Nexus, as we see it always has energy, where food also has some social problems related to it, which are also important to take into account. Correct, correct. For us also, we have social aspect, for me, give an example of my country Bahrain, that the use of people, how they use the proper use of water resources, they do accessively use water, even though we have no natural source of water. So I understand that social aspect sometimes can be a big factor, I think. Exactly. So anything else to add? Please come again, please. Sorry, I was saying just anything else to add? I can't. Yeah, I have no more comments here. We have a common ground that G is one of the main challenges. For sure, for sure. Yes, yes, yes. And I think it's going to be for the future years as well. And it will increase the countries that will start presenting this problem as well. Indeed. Yeah, so it's very important to start planning holistically. Yeah, to be able to preserve the security in all of the sectors, right? Okay. For example, one of the sad stories that happened recently, they were starting to establish their strategy plan for the water in case of emergency, like the COVID that we are going through right now. And one of the message is for God to count that water is related to energy because we have no natural water. So we always use desalination factor. So imagine having a strategy plan that does not include the main source of your water. That's why it's always important to have all these three nexus together. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, you're right. In your countries, what is the main driver for what consumption? Is it agriculture? No, it's mainly for house use. And after that, industrial. Agriculture and industrial, they are competing. But we lost a lot of our agricultural areas. So we have to leave in one minute. One minute, yeah. Yeah, just say it was a one minute long. Okay, thank you. It was pleasure to meet you. It was pleasure, same. Nice to meet you. Yes, nice to discuss about this. Yeah, nice to meet you. Have a good day, take care. Let's take her on a fray, take care. Okay, take care, see you. So let's wait a little bit. I felt like I was having a coffee at a conference. It's really nice. Yeah, I think it's nice to do what we can to recreate that. So Francesco, we are back, I think. I mean, at least the people that just survived the breaking group, we still have a good number. You can start. Perfect. Yes, so I hope you found that interesting to speak with people from other fields and other nationalities. Independently, if you had the occasion to share your ideas in the breakout room or even if you're just thinking about it right now alone, it would be very interesting if you could share some ideas here with Mentimeter as we are quite a few people. And we suggest a format. You don't necessarily have to follow that, but we suggest that you write in the text, the country, where this next challenge that you identified is interesting, which sector it involves and a short description of the challenge. So for me, an example could be Italy, energy and water and hydropower versus agricultural, like agricultural water use. So if you're coming in, we have someone from Jordan that we discuss up to now, silo management, different priorities for each sector. This is something that of course raises in each country and that's something that makes this kind of dialogues extremely important to align and decide on these priorities. We have an example from the US between water and energy, looking at desalination and water security versus greenhouse gas emission reduction. Yeah, some very interesting examples are coming out, more and more actually now. So looking at high water intensive crops. This is for Colombia. Here there is an example for Lebanon, looking at three sectors, agricultural water energy. So an issue looking at water shortage and water treatment. Aynbran in Bahrain, sea water intrusion and reduction of groundwater for climate change. I now see people that start commenting on the impact of climate change that of course is pervasive across all water energy and land food sector. Now they're becoming, thank you for all your contribution. They're becoming too many that they cannot read them all. In Brazil, beef cattle production is causing huge impacts on the environment in the water cycle. Here we have an example from Iran, water food and environment. There is high competition between agricultural environmental demands in Lake Urmia. Okay, I think we will share this. Already 20 of you have shared some opinion and if you feel that you would like to express more, any of these, please feel free to speak up. So I'll let this go. Again, in the meantime, I think we had a couple of questions from the previous session. So maybe I can restart that. I think a common question that I will ask Yusef and Annette was at the applicability. So how these nexus processes and methodologies then result in action in policy. So can you elaborate a bit at the barrier between these projects that look at the nexus interaction or the way to decision making? How do we get that into decisions to make better nexus choices? I'm sure Annette would like to start or should I? Why don't you start Yusef, yes. Yeah, yeah, so thanks. I think that's an important point and what I try to highlight in the example of the Northwestern Sahara Aquifer System is the level where we reach to identifying the different actors from different ministries or agencies or whoever can contribute to the implementation of these nexus solutions. Of course, at this stage, the analysis itself is some sort of developing the policy briefs for the policymakers. The next step is for the local ministries and institutions to take this product, the entire analysis, the outcomes of the analysis and to shape it into a formal policies and synergize planning steps. So everything as an input for that step is there. So that's one example from the Northwestern Sahara Aquifer System. If I can go a little bit outside of the Nina region, there is another study where we are developing a nexus assessment in a transboundary river basin in the Balkans and the dream shared between North and Macedonia, Albania, and other countries where the outcomes of the nexus analysis is feeding into something called the SAB or the strategic action plans that will be endorsed by the riparian countries. So that's a clear example where there is some sort of a hub or a mechanism that can take the outputs of the nexus study and translate them directly into policies and future plans. So I hope I answered this question. Yeah, I could add an example from California where increasing water insecurity is leading towards a path of desalination. But desalination contradicts policies around reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So the city of Los Angeles is now looking at the possibility of potable wastewater reuse as an alternative. It's also somewhat energy intensive but less so than desalination. Thank you. So there are a few more questions and actually already people from 30 countries have added nexus challenges. So we will look at those interestingly and we will share with everyone. Unfortunately, we are running out of time. So I think I maybe can pass the word back to our hosts from FAO for some closing remarks. But again, I think this was a very, very interesting session and we really appreciate your contribution and looking at all these issues around the nexus and we really hope this was a useful session for those of you that for the first time look at the nexus but also for those of you that work with it already.