Water battle, a successful challenge

Winning water battle and clear the specter of water stress in a very unfavorable geographic and climate context, even hostile, has always been a major challenge that the leaders of modern Algeria have attempted to meet for half a century of independence. Covering an area of around 2.4 million km², Algeria has, in fact, a vast geographic and climatic diversity from north to south, with coastal and sub-littoral regions, a vast expanse of high plains, the semi-arid "highlands" and finally a huge Saharan set with arid and hyper-arid climate. Likewise the 17 African countries affected by water deficit, Algeria is in the category of poor countries in water resources according to scarcity threshold set by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) or the World Bank to 1,000 cubic meters per capita per year. For the superficial resource availability, Algeria had at the dawn of independence, some 1,500 m3 per capita per year, before falling to 720 m3 in 1990, 680 in 1995 m3 and 630 m3 in 1998. It is currently estimated at 500 m3 and will be only 430 m3 in 2020, according to projections by the UN. Aware of the critical importance of water as a factor in sustainable development, the Algerian authorities have set an essential goal to improve water supply levels through the various programs designed to mobilize conventional and unconventional resources according to the specificity of each region of this ’’continent-size country ’’. Faced with the challenge of ensuring adequate coverage of the growing needs, both domestic, agricultural and industrial, lined with alarming scarcity, several policies of mobilization and management of water resources were implemented since independence with a more or less intense depending largely on the availability of funding, dependent during the oil barrel. Indeed, the missions of the water sector were allocated, in the aftermath of independence between the sectors of public works and agriculture. The ADE (Algérienne des Eaux) is now in charge of the implementation of the national drinking water management in all aspects of production management, transfer, processing, storage, supply, distribution and supply of drinking and industrial water. It also is responsible for ensuring project ownership and management for its own account or by delegation on behalf of the State or local government. Awareness of issues of water sustainable management Despite significant efforts by the state to ensure a secure supply of drinking water, especially in rural areas, only since fifteen years arose a king of awareness of the real challenges of sustainable management of water resources. This realization was especially evident in 1999 with the creation of a ministry dedicated exclusively to the sector. As part of this new strategy, the national water policy revolves around three basic axes, i.e. improving resource mobilization, economy and ensure the protection of water and reform the framework for water governance. Thanks to support program growth for the period 2005-2009, a significant breakthrough was achieved in projects and funding. This program had devoted a budget of over $ 200 million for the mobilization of an additional volume of 2.9 million m3 per day, the realization of 69 dams and triple water reserves, bringing them to 7.4 billion m3 in 2009 against 2.5 billionm3 in 2004, treatment and recovery of some 600 million m3 of wastewater in addition to achieving 14 desalination plants. A five year later, the new program of major public investments for 2010-2014, currently under implementation, this time, devoted a much larger sum which is approaching $ 20 billion.