CDIS-2

The 23^rd ICID Congress in Mexico

October 8-14, 2014 - The Capacity Development and Institutional Strengthening (CDIS) Output-2 project main objectives is to support the government staff and help them in the process of capacity development in the field of irrigation. In this concern, the project has been ensuring participation of the government counterparts in trainings / workshop / conferences, both in-country and aboard.

The 23rd International Congress on Irrigation and Drainage was organized from 8-14 October 2017 and hosted in Mexico City, Mexico. The main theme of the Congress is ‘Modernizing Irrigation and Drainage for a New Green Revolution’. The congress aim was to address two questions of: (i) Water Productivity: Revisiting the concepts in light of water, energy and food nexus; and (ii) State of knowledge of irrigation techniques and practicalities within given socio-economic settings. ICID provides a unique platform for multi-stakeholder for sharing and learning by engaging in issues of interest at global level and gathers a wide range of experts from various fields to discuss important issues highlighted.

The objective of the congress is to bring together all the stakeholders involved in irrigation and drainage and allied sectors which alone can meet the growing food demand and address poverty, in times of changing climate and depleting freshwater resources and is key to the rural transformation. The forum addresses the various multidisciplinary perspectives that encompasses agriculture water management for rural transformation and includes irrigation, drainage, flood management, drought, land reclamation, climate and environment disciplines.

With the technical and financial support of CDIS Output-2 project of FAO, Afghanistan has also recently initiated the process for taking membership of ICID. Moreover, the irrigation professionals have responded to the call for papers from ICID and the following two papers have even been presented during the event:

1.     “Water, Food and Energy Nexus: Experiences from Afghanistan” by Deputy Minister Fahimullah Ziaee, Masoom Hamdard and Suman Sijapati

2.     “Sustainable On-farm Irrigation Systems in Afghanistan: Current Challenges and Future Needs” by Mohammad Asif and Najmuddin Najam

In this context, teams led by some high-level delegate participated from Afghanistan in the ICID 2017 event. The participation of the team was funded by FAO Afghanistan under the CDIS Output-2 project.