Focus Iraq: SEI’s water tools and training enhance water resilience

Iraq faces significant water challenges due to its dry climate, rising temperatures and upstream water diversions, which threaten the country’s access to water. As demand increases, supply struggles to keep up, leading to significant shortages. This situation is compounded by pollution from untreated waste, which contaminates the already limited water sources and poses serious public health risks. The combination of poor water quality, declining supplies and climate-driven weather events severely affects Iraq’s water security. 

In response to these challenges, the Iraqi government has prioritized water resource management in its National Distributed Contribution (NDC) plan, which outlines its climate action goals. The government is committed to developing sustainable water management practices that account for the effects of climate change. 

SEI researchers have stepped in to support Iraq in addressing these water challenges. Working closely with the Iraqi Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR) and supported by the Sida funded Water innovation for circularity and enhanced resilience (WICER) project, SEI engages with national stakeholders and partners, providing technical expertise to enhance their water management skills.  

In December 2024, SEI organized a training session and study visit in Amman, Jordan, bringing together representatives from MoWR and the Kurdistan Regional Government Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources. The training aimed to inspire new ideas for Iraq’s water management strategies by sharing best practices from the region and beyond.  

 SEI’s  Annette Huber-Lee, Uttam Ghimire and Kim Andersson led the sessions, sharing knowledge on effective water management strategies, including circularity. The training included hands-on learning with water management tools, focusing on improving water resource planning and evaluation.  

MoWR water resource technical staff were introduced to WEAP, SEI’s flagship tool for integrated water resource planning. WEAP provides a comprehensive, flexible and user-friendly framework for analysing water policies and planning. Participants learned how to model water systems, examine river and catchment functions, and analyse water supply and demand dynamics.  

Beyond WEAP, participants explored additional analytical tools, including the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a watershed-scale model used to simulate surface and groundwater quality and predict the environmental impacts of land use, land management practices and climate change. They also worked with several other tools designed to analyse water data, including methods for using secondary data sources when reliable information is scarce. 

Connecting water management with sustainability, the session introduced methods to recover water and nutrients from waste in urban and rural areas. One key technique explored was constructed wetlands, which improve water reuse and build resilience against climate change. 

Participants had the opportunity to visit to various sites in Jordan, observing innovative water management practices firsthand including Jordan’s largest wastewater treatment plant (Al-Samra wastewater treatment plant) and wastewater reuse innovation to gain insights into effective wastewater reuse. This hands-on experience deepened their understanding of the tools they had learned. 

Kim Andersson, project lead for WICER, emphasized the value of combining classroom learning with real-world application: “Iraq’s water problems demand urgent solutions. Learning from innovative approaches in water-scarce regions, like those implemented in Jordan, is crucial in identifying best practices and flexibility of approach.”