Regional Studies Center

Regional Studies Center held a workshop entitled “Raising  Awareness and Education on the Importance of Rationalizing Water Consumption and Its Relationship to Sustainable Development,” delivered by Assist. Prof. Dr. Nawfal Qasim Al-Shahwan, in the presence of the Center’s researchers, on December 24, 2023.

The workshop aimed to enhance community awareness of the importance of rationalizing water consumption and reducing waste and its relationship to implementing sustainable development goals related to water in accordance with national priorities without affecting the next generation, and ways to manage the increasing demand for water with population growth and working to increase water supplies by rationalizing consumption and through unconventional water resources such as groundwater, water desalination, and wastewater treatment.

The workshop addressed several topics, including clean drinking water; treatment and management of wastewater, efficiency in water use, water security, integrated management of water resources, management of shared water resources, and water-related ecosystems, and then providing proposed recommendations to confront water scarcity in Iraq and the Arab countries, within goal (6) of the sustainable development goals related to water and national priorities. The workshop showed, through diagrams and practical frameworks, in addition to a number of examples from Australia and the Maghreb, how to manage and rationalize water consumption and the efficiency of its use, and emphasized the responsibility of state departments for planning and treatments, as well as providing solutions and adopting proposals, with the involvement of different levels of the country.