Establishment of ACCBAT Technical Committee in Jordan
Baq’a. January 2014
Upon invitation of ACCBAT National Coordinator and according to the operational plan set out in November 2013, staff members of ACCBAT project gathered today January 14th, 2014 at NCARE HQ in Baq’a to establish ACCBAT Technical Committee (TC) in Jordan. The TC is chaired by ACCBAT National Coordinator, Dr. Ibrahim Bashabsheh, and its members are project’s General Agronomist, Eng. Berardo da Schio, and Irrigation Specialists, Eng. Mohammad Mudabber and Dr. Luna Al Hadidi.
With regards to the technical implementation of ACCBAT project in Jordan, the TC reviewed project team and staff names, position and areas of intervention, as well as recapped the overall project goal and specific objectives. Therefore, taking into account project documents, previous surveys and calendar of activities, the TC identified two short-term focuses: i) initial survey of beneficiary farmers in the target areas, and ii) set up of pilot installation at NCARE experimental station.
Initial survey of beneficiary farmers in the target areas
Located in the Jordanian highlands within the ENPI eligible territories and featuring both wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and agricultural activity, Ramtha, Salt and Madaba were all confirmed as target areas for project activities implementation. The TC discussed the outline of this survey that shall include literature study, web research, data collection and direct interviews to beneficiaries in order to give a detailed report for accurate, efficient and sustainable intervention in each location.
Set up of pilot installation at NCARE experimental station
An area of about 2du located in NCARE premises in Ramtha has been selected for the set-up of a pilot installation using treated WW in agricultural production. The main goal of pilot installation will be to establish a demo plot for agricultural research on one hand, showing at the same time to farmers and other stakeholders the best practices identified in view of disseminate the results and possibly scale up the intervention. In order to develop a research idea and approach, concepts have been formulated and discussed by TC members.
Last, but not least, the TC highlighted the need of gather all available information on waste-water sector in Jordan. Particularly, laws, bills and regulation as well as state-of-the-art technology and application in agriculture shall be collected and streamlined in order to precisely define scope of ACCBAT project and make the intervention as much sustainable and effective as possible in the target areas.
