The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW)

The Executive Director, Dr. Faraj El Awar, contributed to the second edition of FAO flagship publication entitled “The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW),” which is published every ten years. The periodical publication provides a review of changes in land and water resources state globally and establishes a baseline of the driving forces, pressures, impacts, and options of response that are available to development practitioners and policy makers.

Project Scope of Work:

Dr. El Awar was requested by FAO, Land and Water Division, to develop the key messages, annotated outlines, and short summaries of the contents of three SOLAW chapters tentatively entitled “Land and Water Systems at Risk, Hot Spots, and Emerging Issues”, “Dryland Systems: Management Pathways for Unique Landscapes”, and “Technical Options for Sustainable Soil, Land, and Water Management.” Dr. El Awar was tasked also to draft the full text of the latter two chapters. 

In fulfilment of the above assignments, Dr. El Awar performed the following:

  • Surveyed the literature and available data to identify the data/information sources to support the drafting of the three chapters.
  • Provided input and guidance to produce pertinent data, information, tables/figures/maps, and analyses for the three chapters.
  • Identified a number of case studies demonstrating some key new developments related to the three chapters.
  • Identified the targets within the Sustainable Development Goals that are relevant to the three chapters, and incorporated the SDG indicators into the annotated content of the three chapters.

Project Results

  • The key messages, annotated outlines, and short content summaries of the above mentioned three SOLAW chapters were developed by Dr. Faraj El Awar
  • The full text of the two chapters tentatively entitled “Dryland Systems: Management Pathways for Unique Landscapes”, and “Technical Options for Sustainable Land and Water Management,” were drafted by Dr. Faraj El Awar

Link to “The State of the World’s Land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture (SOLAW)” full publication: https://www.fao.org/4/i1688e/i1688e.pdf

Project Client: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO

Project Donor: The UN Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO