Background

Regional and National efforts

International initiatives

The four countries of the NSAS have all signed up for international initiatives geared to better understanding and resolving environmental issues affecting them. Each country signed and ratified the international Convention on Biodiversity (CBD). Connected to this, Chad aims to re-introduce plants that have disappeared from arid areas such as the Logoni Basin. All four countries also signed and ratified the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The ‘Joint Authority’

In the early 1970s, Egypt and Libya initiated a process for the four NSAS countries to start cooperating in managing NSAS water resources. In 1992, it was formalized with the creation of the Joint Authority for the Management of the NSAS System. Sudan joined in 1996 and Chad followed in 1999. Successes include an agreement to develop a regional monitoring network with 60 existing wells and 14 recommended new wells. These achievements were made in the frame of a previous project supported by IFAD and implemented by CEDARE.

Regional IAEA assistance

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is currently cooperating with NSAS countries to address water resource management issues through multi-country projects. Since March 2003, the IAEA has also been funding and working with Egypt, Libya and Sudan on a regional project. The regional project, and other IAEA efforts at the national level, helped to improve overall understanding of the NSAS and to set the basis for the much broader current ‘Nubian Project’.

National efforts

To date, all of the NSAS countries have planned and implemented activities geared at better understanding their groundwater resources and how to exploit them, in some cases through projects with the IAEA. For example, the IAEA is currently helping Sudan to assess the origins of pollution, especially from organic fertilizers, pesticides, landfill leakage and human sewage, entering the ‘Khartoum Aquifer’, a reserve that has contact with the NSAS.