Improving governance of access to water resources and their sustainable use in Hodh el Chargui communities (South East Mauritania)

Mauritania, a country located between the Sahelian and the Saharan zones, presents hard environmental andclimatic conditions and a low coverage of cereal needs (on average 30% of needs) and considerable imports ofrice, oil, wheat flour and other commodities that affect the country’s balance of payments and expose it to risks ofexternal crisis.A significant proportion of Mauritanian households are food insecure: in general, food insecurity in urban areas isaround 17% whereas in rural areas it is around 28 - 30%.Among the poorer areas, Hodh el Chargui region, located around 1.000 km to the East of Nouakchott, thecapital city, is one of the most remote areas. This condition is reflected in the weakness of public investmentsand therefore of basic social services (schools, health centres), transport and communications, and inadequatesupervision and assistance to farmers and agro-pastoralists, which are the majority of local economic actors.In addition, the rural exodus deprives the countryside of manpower and prevents the execution of the traditionalmechanisms of development, maintenance and conservation of these fragile ecosystems, threatening the liveli-hoods of rural populations in these areas and undermining their resilience and exacerbating conflicts for naturalresources in pastoral and agro-pastoral areas.To strengthen the resilience of Hodh el Chargui actors and communities and reduce their vulnerability to crisisrisks and to improve governance of access to natural resources (water in particular) and their sustainable use, theproject "Reducing Agro-pastoral Vulnerability and Improving Resilience in Hodh el Chargui", funded by EU, hasbeen implemented in the Program "Institutional Strengthening in Mauritania towards Agricultural and PastoralResilience (RIMRAP)".This project, executed by a network formed by Italian (Terre Solidali Onlus, CISP) and Mauritanian (Terre Sol-idaires Mauritanie, Mauritanie 2000) NGOs and by the CISAO - University of Turin (Italy), aims to: i) establish aparticipatory and inclusive planning system through the realization of a screening in the region; ii) strengthen theresilience capacity of all institutional and local actors and communities; iii) reinforce the management of naturalresources and the development of promising economic sectors; iv) strengthen the capacities of all local actors andcommunities as well as prevention, reduction and crisis response mechanisms.The participatory screening permitted to collect environmental and socio-economic data such as: physicalenvironment, climate and rainfall, water resources (surface and groundwater), soils and vegetal resources, humanenvironment and population (size and spatial representation, social composition), access to basic education andhealth services, infrastructure and community amenities, such as water infrastructure, roads, energy, communica-tions, economic activities (livestock, agriculture, forestry, commerce), status of women and gender issues.These data will be crossed with field investigation campaign to specify the axes of intervention and priorityactivities to be carried out to improve the sustainable management and use of natural resources, to developpromising economic sectors and activities and to prepare a plan for prevention, reduction and response to possiblecrises.