This Conference aims to bring together leading professionals, specialists, practitioners and researchers involved in various aspects of water resources management with a distinct focus on the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA Region). The conference will encourage and facilitate the exchange of experiences, research findings and lessons learned from exemplary case studies. This will be facilitated by establishing a platform to review the current state and discuss the recent innovations, trends and practical solutions that address the challenges of maintaining water security in the MENA Region in a rapidly changing world.
After careful consideration from the organizers regarding both the unpredictability of the Covid pandemic and the continued uncertainties of holding large in-person events, the UoB-FEMRC Conference has been postponed to February of 2022.
Our new scheduling denotes our strong belief in the importance of face to face discussions to ensure both the success of this event on the shared water challenges of our region and the safety of visitors to the University of Bahrain for the planned conference and its workshop sessions.
Future Earth
is a major international program of scientific research and innovation for global sustainability. It provides a platform for research around the greatest challenges facing humanity – and engages policy-makers Read More
Future Earth
MENA Regional Center
is hosted by the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia, Cyprus and serves the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and North Africa. The Regional Center works to identify and implement such strategies Read More
University of Bahrain Partnership
The Conference Water in the MENA Region: Preparing for a Changing World will be the Future Earth MENA Regional Center’s (FEMRC) first regional conference outside Cyprus. The University of Bahrain has been chosen to be the first host, partner and co-organizer of what is projected to be a biennial gathering of Future Earth and regional partners, each time in a new location and with a new thematic focus. This year’s conference on the topic of water scarcity is being planned within the context of an “in the MENA Region – with the MENA Region – for the MENA Region” event.
Overall Goal and Concept
The FEMRC Bahrain conference will encourage and highlight participation of our colleagues from the region and propose an approach that prioritizes both regionally-collected research and practical problem-solving measures regarding the similar and inter-related challenges affecting our water systems. The immediate objective will be to find our commonalities of purpose and to identify the best methods with which to share or adapt our solutions. The anticipated long-term intention of this conference will be to set a course for attainable and feasible future collaboration between all of our countries, and to ensure that each subsequent conference is time purposefully spent together addressing current and anticipated environmental challenges faced by the region.
Expected Outcomes
This Conference is envisioned to provide a focused platform to review the current state and to discuss the recent innovations, trends and practical solutions that address the challenges of maintaining water security in the MENA Region. In so doing, we can define and tackle our own unique regional needs and requirements within the particular realities of how our countries actually function. We envision that regional partners attending the conference will find methods to co-develop and co-implement projects that can drive transformations and broadly-applicable solutions across the region. These solutions should make sense for us and our region’s particular needs in light of our region’s environmental, economic and political uncertainties, and contribute to achieve a sustainable and sufficient provision of water for all users in the MENA Region.