The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in collaboration with Iran's Urmia Lake Restoration Program (ULRP) held an expert roundtable to discuss the results of major studies and identify potential interventions as part of the ongoing project "Integrated Programme for Sustainable Water Resources Management in the Urmia Lake Basin."
Organized in three sessions on 22 and 23 April 2019 in ULRP premises in Tehran, the roundtable was attended by experts from FAO, ULRP, IHE-Delft, Ministry of Agriculture-Jahad and other key partners.
The participants shared their findings and discussed potential interventions that are aimed at restoring the lake through sustainable water resources management.
Dr Poolad Karimi, a senior researcher at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education - one of the international partners of FAO - presented the work on water accounting, including land use/crop mapping and potential options for interventions in Urmia Lake basin.
The initial results of the Farm Household Survey including aspects related to the socioeconomic and livelihoods assessment were presented by Dr Aziz Elbehri, the Project Lead Technical Officer (LTO) and Dr Mohammad Vesal, Assistant Professor of Economics at Sharif University and the Project National Socio-economic Consultant.
Dr Ali Maleki, Assistant Professor of Research Institute for Science, Technology, and Industry Policy at Sharif University of Technology, and Project Policy Analysis Consultant, was another panellist who discussed policy and institutional analysis of the programme.
Addressing the issue of potential interventions, Project Chief Technical Advisor, Dr Rao Matta along with former Project Field Coordinator, Dr Hossein Shahbaz, and Project National Officer, Mr Shahriar Rahmani, shared their findings including prospective stakeholders and partners for pilot level implementation. They have also presented the potential timeline, implementation methodology and future steps.
The experts also highlighted the ULRP's ongoing successful collaboration with FAO in implementing the "Integrated Programme for Sustainable Water Resources Management in Urmia Lake Basin" project, with the financial support of the Government of Japan.