Algeria's president Abdulaziz Bouteflika Algeria's president Abdulaziz Bouteflika has urged the international community to act against the wasteful consumption of water and food resources to ensure their abundance to the world's population.
Bouteflika issued a statement on World Water Day in which he called on his citizens to "be keen to ensure a reasonable consumption of national water resources, as it has a significant effect on development projects in the country". Algeria relies on its agricultural sector as a main factor towards its development.
He then directed his message to the international community, stressing on the necessity to develop new agricultural technology that reduced water consumption and bringing about reform in the international food markets to achieve fair distribution for the world's food production.
The Algerian president said: "The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) had in 2002 called for more international awareness towards the world's food and water crisis. But 10 years later, the world has barely acted towards this issue, although the human population had risen tremendously. About 1 billion people are incapable of supplying their food needs, while about 30 per cent of the world's food production is wasted without being consumed."
Bouteflika revealed that his country was open to "coordinated international or regional efforts" which worked towards saving the environment and balanced devleopment, especially concerning the threats of desertification and water pollution.
Bouteflika cited the recent successes of his country in water and food security projects saying: "We have achieved a lot of projects for water dams and canals, in addition to desalinating sea water and water recycling. All these projects enabled us to assure water supply both for civil and agricultural needs."
Bouteflika also referred to a significant increase in cultivation, saying: "The small and medium cultivated areas have witnessed a 180 per cent increase, from 350,000 hectares in the year 2000 to 980,000 hectares in 2011. This was related to our success in irrigation projects."
Bouteflika continued: "We have dedicated 870 billion dirhams ($ 11.7billion) to about 137 water projects to be finished in the period from 2010 to 2014."