Water Grant

World Bank grants Lebanon $1 million to finance four-year project with NASA

The Ministry of Finance announced that the World Bank has allocated $1.05 million to finance a project for improving water resources management across the country.
The Minister of Finance, Mohamad Safadi, and the World Bank’s Director for the MENA region, Hedi Larbi, signed the grant agreement on January 11.
The grant, offered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), will be used for establishing the Land Data Assimilation System, provided by NASA. This entails the purchase and installation of a Water Information System Platform (WISP) and its supplementary equipment. The WISP will enable satellite images to be received from NASA’s MODIS (or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer).
The system will benefit projects related to the Ministry of Energy and Water, Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Environment. The project will be implemented through the National Council for Scientific Research (CNSR).
The four-year project is expected to improve the ability of local stakeholders in monitoring the extent of droughts, estimate water storage conditions, and evaluate potential changes in irrigation water needs under different climate change scenarios.
The grant is within the context of the World Bank’s major project ‘Regional Coordination on Improved Water Resources Management and Capacity Building’.
Through the mentioned project, the World Bank will extend similar grants to Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt to finance water resources-related projects.