Water torture

Gulf governments need to ramp up investment in their water industries to avoid severe shortages in the future.

People dying of thirst, mothers fighting to give their children a drink, countries going to war over control of the rivers that cross their borders. It is an apocalyptic vision of the future - the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters.

But it may not be far from the reality that the world faces over the next 40 years, according to many water specialists who say that global water shortages are already threatening economic growth as well as geo-political stability.

"Many countries are living on a cushion," says Julia Bucknall, lead natural resources specialist at the World Bank and author of a recent report into water shortages across the MENA region. "The problem is that cushion is disappearing.

The World Bank warns that governments in the Middle East and North Africa should start to invest in the water industry now in order to avoid severe shortages in the future.

It also predicts that the amount of water available per person in the region will halve by 2050. Declining water quality is already starting to have an affect on economies. Lack of water in Morocco, Algeria and Egypt is being blamed for a 1% decline in gross national product. In Iran that figure is 3%.

"It is a big problem and it is affecting economic growth, in particular farmers," she explains. "If things continue to go unchecked farmers will be the first to be hit and government spending will increase exponentially.

The report blames the changes in climate and the growth of the population as two of the biggest reasons for declining water resources.

The World Bank estimates a 20% decline in water precipitation across the Middle East. Its effects will be seen differently in different parts of the region.

"The real problem is not water resource quality, it is the way it's used for agriculture and food production," says Bucknall, who says MENA government's priorities should focus on reducing water usage rather than boosting supply.

The Middle East and North Africa is the most water-scarce region in the world. The average water availability per person around the world is 7,000 m3 per person, per year - in the MENA region this figure is just 1,200 m³.

One half of the region's population lives under conditions of water stress. Moreover, with the population expected to grow from around 300 million today to around 500 million in 2025, per capita availability is expected to halve by 2050.

Leaking pipes account for up to 50% loss of water in some parts of the region.

"It's unusual in Europe if you get leakage of 30% but in the Middle East if you get under 30%, you are doing very well," says Bob Smith, operations manager at Dubai-based water specialist, Metito.

Tom Pankratz, an independent desalination consultant in the US, agrees. "One of the biggest problems in the Middle East is that such a huge amount of water is unaccounted for and lost through leakage. In some countries well over 40% [of water] is lost in transit. It's shocking.

The Middle East is also a high consumer of water, led by the UAE, which has the highest water consumption in the world compared to Western countries, due to climatic conditions and high per capita income, according to a study by Emirates Industrial Bank.

Another World Bank report states 80% of water which falls in the MENA region is already being used. The figure is in stark contrast to other areas of the world, such as Latin America, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa, which use only about 2% of available water in their regions.

Most water consumed in the Middle East and North Africa is desalinated due to a lack of adequate groundwater resources. Yemen, Djibouti and the GCC all almost entirely depend on groundwater and desalination.

"Desalinated water is one of the purest forms of water, yet people in the Middle East are using it to water their gardens," says Pankratz.

Building new desalination plants is one of the few options for oil-rich Gulf states, which can tap cheap access to natural gas to build plants that would be prohibitively expensive to construct in many other parts of the developing world.

Reducing water usage is the only way to effectively combat the problem. "We have to make sure that water shortage is actually cut down significantly so we don't need more power to actually make water," says Smith.

Efforts to reduce water across the region aren't helped by low tariffs which allow consumers to benefit from subsidised production costs.

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