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E
conomic
D
evelopment
and
W
ater
Law No. 9 of 2007 Establishing the Department of Municipal
Affairs transferred powers and mandates around agriculture to
ADFCA, making it the competent authority for agriculture. ADFCA
developed the agricultural policy and prepared the plans for achiev-
ing sustainable agricultural growth, while mitigating the harmful
effects of certain improper agricultural practices on the environment.
Law No. 4 of 2009 established the ADFSC with the responsibility for
implementing Abu Dhabi’s agricultural policy by engaging farmers
to adopt best agricultural practices.
With the Agriculture and Food Safety Policy (2011), ADFCA
embarked on an ambitious programme of policy development,
expanding responsibility for the entire food chain from farm to
fork including the safety of foods imported into the emirate. This
new policy consists of 11 general policies and 15 agriculture poli-
cies. The Agriculture Policy recognizes the challenge of supporting
agriculture growth in a context of water scarcity and addresses the
potential environmental concerns in the Agricultural Land Use
Policy, Agricultural Water Use Policy and Production Choice Policy.
The Agriculture Water Use Policy (2011) has the objective to
maximize efficiency and support sustainability by covering barriers
to efficient agricultural water use; water targets for use; water use
impact assessment to address economic, social and environmental
factors in reaching decisions on agriculture activities using water;
data for water impact assessments; and liaison with other depart-
ments and agencies. The policy will also combine supply-side and
demand-side management measures, so that the supply-side meas-
ures focus on increasing the availability of water for crop irrigation
and demand-side measures focus on developing and implementing
programmes to use water resources more efficiently.
A new governance and regulatory framework for
groundwater management
Having a clear vision and developing new policies requires the support
of a strong governance framework to achieve the implementation of
any proposed actions in water management. The current
system of water governance in the emirate of Abu Dhabi
has reasonably clear lines of demarcation between the enti-
ties responsible for each type of water. However, in the
area of groundwater management, limited communication
between the various management organizations and user
groups has led to overlaps and gaps between the activi-
ties of the various federal and emirate-level environmental
organizations – such as establishing regulations, control-
ling resource use, and collecting and managing data.
To address these issues, the Abu Dhabi Government
has made significant progress towards providing an
effective governance framework that clarifies the roles
and responsibilities of the entities managing groundwa-
ter, and improves coordination to help streamline water
management and regulations to control the abstractions.
Executive decisions numbers 14 (session 8/2005) and 4
(session 17/2005) commissioned EAD to undertake an
assessment of groundwater resources by making it the
competent authority for managing groundwater in Abu
Dhabi, including water security initiatives.
Law No. 6 of 2006 for Drilling of Wells, and subse-
quent by-laws and amendments, authorized EAD to
regulate the licensing and drilling of water wells and
to monitor usage. It also gave EAD employees powers
to access any land, farm or facility to conduct research
or collect data on deep water resources. Since then, a
licence must be obtained before carrying out any works,
including drilling of new wells and deepening of exist-
ing wells. In addition, this law is currently is being
reviewed to enable prosecution and penalties for illegal
abstraction and selling of underground water.
The Water Resource Master Plan (2009) was devel-
oped by EAD with the aim of improving the quantity and
EAD is constructing experimental solar desalination plants that transform saline water from groundwater aquifers into fresh water
Image: EAD