The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA), and in partnership with the World Bank, is organizing a Workshop on Building Capacity for Accessing Disruptive Technologies for Improved Water Resources Management under Climate Change from 14 to 15 January 2020, in Beirut.

The meeting aims to identify challenges, opportunities, and innovative approaches for utilizing disruptive technologies and climate projections for improved water resources management in the Mashreq region, leveraging on current progress and successes.

At the technical level, professionals can exchange experiences and best practices to support peer-to-peer learning and improve capacity in a range of areas, including water resources management and climate change adaptation. In this context, disruptive technologies can provide useful ideas on new ways to address these issues and leverage existing opportunities to advance a more integrated water management approach in the region.

Regional climate modelling can also help to project climate change impacts on water resources and water-dependent sectors in the region. The meeting will thus explore available regional climate modeling, hydrological modeling and integrated vulnerability assessment tools and outputs that can inform hydrological and agricultural modelling applications in the region. This will include an overview of the regional climate projections and how to access available tools and datasets for conducting vulnerability assessments and sector-based analysis.

The meeting also presents examples of disruptive technologies from around the globe that have improved water resources management at national and in transboundary settings in view of identifying potential opportunities for drawing upon these innovative tools that could be beneficial for the Mashreq region.