From improved knowledge to governance of transboundary groundwater
(GEF IW:LEARN World Water Day 2022 Special Bulletin) With the water resources of the Northern Sahara Aquifer System (NSSA) also known as SASS spread over 1 million km2 between Algeria, Libya, and Tunisia, the aquifer system in this region is poorly recharged and renewed. It is exposed to increasing exploitation, mainly for irrigated agriculture. Under these conditions, it is necessary to formulate an "optimal" resource management scheme to ensure the necessary water withdrawals for the best development of the region without the risk of degrading the state of the resource. Consequently, these three countries worked together to understand this resource by developing management tools such as a common database (more than 18,000 water points, mainly boreholes), a common GIS (to develop thematic maps), and a hydrogeological model (at the scale of the entire aquifer system and in sub-models). The hydrogeological model estimates an average recharge of one million m3 per year.
