More than half of the 33 countries in the world that are expected to suffer from a sharp water crisis by the year 2040 are in the MENA region, according to researchers from the World Institute for Water Resources (WRI).
According to the study that covered 167 countries, eight countries in the region rank among the top 10 in the world that would face the most acute water stress in 25 years’ time. They are Bahrain, Kuwait, the Palestinian Territories, Qatar, UAE, Isael, Saudi Arabia and Oman.
The other countries from the region among the 33 that would be most water-stressed in 2040 worldwide are Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Libya, Yemen, Morocco, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Algeria and Tunisia.
The researchers said that the Middle East is already probably the least water-secure region in the world. It draws heavily on groundwater and desalinated sea water, and faces “exceptional water-related challenges for the foreseeable future”.
With regional violence and political turmoil commanding global attention, water may seem tangential. However, drought and water shortages in Syria likely contributed to the unrest that stoked the start of the country civil war in 2011. Dwindling water resources and chronic mismanagement forced 1.5 million people, primarily farmers and herders, to lose their livelihoods and leave their land, move to urban areas, and magnify Syria’s general destabilisation, said WRI.
Saudi Arabia’s government said its people will depend entirely on grain imports by 2016, a change from decades of growing all they need, due to fear of water-resource depletion. The US National Intelligence Council wrote that water problems will put key MENA countries at greater risk of instability and state failure and distract them from foreign policy engagements with the US.
Ms Betsy Otto, Director of the WRI’s Global Water Programme, told Reuters that said it was important for governments to understand the potential risks they face in terms of the water needed to run their economies, including rising demand as populations grow and the still uncertain impacts of climate change.
One measure likely to become more common in the Middle East and elsewhere is water reuse systems that recycle waste water.