Two capacity building workshops – one respectively for participants from the Maghreb and the Mashrek regions - on environmental economic concepts and valuation techniques to cost water resources degradation were organized in Tunisia and Athens in June 2014.

41 environment and water specialists from relevant Ministries, River Basin Agencies, Universities, Research Centers and NGOs of 8 South Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia) participated in the training.

Guided by the SWIM-SM experts, participants applied the techniques with focus on impacts related to health, water quality, quantity and storage in some selected case studies inspired by assessments already performed by the project on the Litani Basin in Lebanon and the Medjerda Basin in Tunisia.

Based on the case study institutional and legal arrangements as well as the quantitative assessment,  participants were able to prioritize interventions over the short-long term while recommending legal and institutional adjustments to help set up an enabling environment for performing the prioritized targets.

Participants considered the training very useful and relevant to their work, because it enabled them to have a hands-on experience on environmental degradation issues and ways to guide investment choices. Many expressed their intention to share the concepts and techniques acquired and sensitize their colleagues on the need to mainstream the environmental economic approach in future studies, research and development projects and make it a necessary requirement in all sustainable development programs and projects. Also, the academics who participated in the trainings, intend to introduce a module on the valuation of the cost of environmental degradation in the university curriculum.

In the past two years SWIM-SM has focused on assessing the cost of water resources degradation and remediation measures in four South Mediterranean River Basins (Litani in Lebanon, Medjerda in Tunisia, Oum Er-Rbia in Morocco and Seybouse in Algeria) in order to demonstrate the usefulness of quantifying economic gains and losses from a range of water management decisions and particularly in view of promoting:

·         better allocations from the current budget to support management of environment and water resource sectors;

·         better guidance to business about most efficient investments;

·         better infrastructure investment decisions that reflect all the potential gains from sustainable management of environment or water sectors.

To download the assessments and policy notes prepared for the above-mentioned River Basins, please click here.