Gulf economies risk water torture

The amount of water available for each person in the Middle East will halve by 2050 according to the World Bank.

It is a frightening statistic though not a surprising one. Water consumption in the region has become profligate. People wash their cars almost as frequently as themselves. Sprinklers pump the precious resource onto golf courses that evaporates before it touches the ground. Shopping centres and hotels are built with vast and lavish water features, while developers construct apartments with twice as many bathrooms as bedrooms, designed either by the incontinent or the inept.

From Libya to Saudi Arabia, underground aquifers are being pumped dry and when such subterranean water resources straddle national borders there is the potential for conflict to erupt between states. That hasn't happened yet in any significant way, but who is to say it won't in the future?

The economic impact of the problem is already being felt across the region. About 3% of Iran's GDP has evaporated because of declining water quality according to the bank, with Morocco, Algeria and Egypt trailing close behind.

The Gulf countries consume 50% more water per person than in the United States and that cannot be explained away by the very different climatic conditions they face. Within the Gulf region, the real estate industry must accept some responsibility for the trend that is starting to threaten growth.

If the developers don't start to get their own house in order by designing more efficient structures, then governments need to step in to do it for them.

Legislative measures to ensure that water resources are conserved as far as possible have yet to be adopted in a meaningful way within this region.

Some local municipalities and government departments have started to influence building design and curb consumer consumption, but more needs to be done.

One issue is that water is often seen as a supply problem, rather than one of demand.

The tendency has been to procure bigger and better desalination plants rather than looking to where consumption can be reduced through intelligent design and commercial incentives.

As Gulf economies battle to control inflation by introducing price controls on food and other consumables, they are unlikely to favour raising the cost of water to better reflect its cost of production and deter the public from using it wastefully.

Without a brutal pricing structure in place to remind all of us who live here of the need to use water more sparingly, the region will continue to pour money down the drain.

Sean Cronin is editor of Arabian Business English.

RELATED LINK: Water torture

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READERS' COMMENTS

this article
Posted by ali, london, uk on Monday 21 April 2008 at 03:56 UAE time

I have had enough of these English journalists here, who come and make rude puns towards the Arab nation. For example here he brings the word torture into a 'pun'. What has that got to do with the sea drying up? Every week I see a pun making fun of the Arab people. Tell them to go back and stop giving them high wages.

Editor's Reply: Ali, I am certain there was no attempt to make fun of anyone. The journalist was just practicing his trade of finding headlines to get you to read the story. No water would undoubtedly be torture after all.

This headline may find itself in The Times or Wall Street Journal - I am sure it has already - it is not that original unfortunately. The journalist would not be making fun of Americans or English people, he would just be endeavouring to make the story jump off the page.

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