Watershed and Water Management System in Algeria

Abstract

Water resources in Algeria are limited, vulnerable and unequally distributed. These resources have in addition undergone during the two last decades the harmful effects of drought, pollution, and unproper management. The water potentialities in Algeria are estimated overall at 19 billion cubic meters per year (correspondent with approximately 600m³/inhabitant/year). Thus Algeria is categorized as one of the countries low in water resources taking into consideration the threshold of scarcity established by the World Bank at 1,000m³/inhabitant/year).

In addition the history of water management in Algeria since independence is one of a proliferation of structures and texts in charge of hydrology matters. It was necessary to wait until the 1990s, after national bases of water in 1996, when there emerged a realization of the need for organizing the management of water resources in a comprehensive, coherent, and rational way by the adoption of a new policy of water.

A new water policy based on the principles of unifying the resource, of management integrated on a catchment area scale, of concerted management – economic and environmental – was established in 1996.

This report is organized around the following areas:

• Fundamental elements of the current assumption of responsibility for water management in Algeria (the water resources and the committed process of institutional recasting of the framework: organization, administration, financing and achievements)

• Overall appreciation of the possibilities for improvement of management by evaluating the impacts of the management structure

• Possibilities for improvement of the new water policy