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WATER DAY-GULF: Forced to Look Beyond Desalination Plants

Meena Janardhan

DUBAI, Mar 21 2007 (IPS) - The holy month of Ramadan is a time when Muslims retreat into fasting and prayer. Last September though, devotees near the Saudi port city of Jeddah had violence on their minds as they broke a day-long fast. Fists flew when told that water brought them in tankers had run out.

Such scenarios reflect the growing problem of water shortage in the Gulf region, presenting a significant challenge to the people and the governments. Scanty rainfall together with high rates of evaporation and consumption have led to deficits in ‘‘water budgets”. Population growth, rapid urbanisation and wasteful consumption patterns have added to the pressure.

Statistics reveal that the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have an urbanisation level of about 85 percent. As a result, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for example, is the world’s second largest consumer of water per capita after the United States. Its average daily domestic consumption is 353 litres (80 gallons) per person compared to 425 litres in the U.S.

GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Iraq, Iran and several other Middle Eastern countries around the Persian Gulf are not members.

A World Bank report released early March warns countries in the Gulf and the Middle East that by 2050 per capita water availability in the region will reduce by half. The ‘‘social, economic and budgetary consequences could be enormous” if governments do not accelerate reforms to deal with water scarcity, the report said.

Ahead of World Water Day on Thursday, Mohamed Raouf, senior environmentalist at the Gulf Research Centre (GRC) in Dubai, told IPS that ‘’the foremost strategy for sustainable use of water is to protect and conserve the available resources”. This, he said, calls for ‘’harvesting every drop of water through rainwater harvesting, protecting the natural and manmade storage reservoirs as well as groundwater aquifers”.

Raof also spoke of the importance protecting traditional systems, an idea recommended at a conference of regional environmentalists in Oman, last year. Mainly this involves continued operation of ‘aflaj’ (a traditional system of conveying water from its source through sloping, open channels to irrigation points) and releasing pressure on groundwater through the reuse of treated waste water and establishment of desalination plants.

Privatisation of water utilities is being adopted to improve the water supply capacity and usage efficiency. For example, with the annual consumption of water in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE, being 26 times more than its annually renewable natural water resources, the emirate announced raising 40 billion dirhams (about 11 billion US dollars) by privatising five power and water projects, last year.

In December, Saudi Arabia began studying a “Water Bank” project in northern Tihama, costing 20 billion riyals (about 5.3 billion dollars), to meet the country’s demand for 21 years. The plan includes constructing dams and reservoirs for water storage.

Since desalination plants are capital intensive, have a relatively short life expectancy along with high maintenance costs and damage the coastal ecosystem, governments in the region are exploring more cost effective and long serving solutions to meet growing water demand.

Despite the many disadvantages, it appears that desalination plants are the best option for now. Saudi Arabia, with a daily production of about 440 million gallons, is the world’s largest producer of desalinated water, followed by the UAE. The GCC countries have over half of the 11,000 desalination plants in the world. With the demand for desalinated water in the region expected to grow at an average of six percent annually, it is estimated that they will require an investment of over 100 billion dollars in desalination plants over the next 10 years.

Reliance on ‘‘desalinated water alone could be a risky policy considering the volatile nature of oil prices and revenues,” said Raouf. ‘’The sustainable use of groundwater resources should be a consideration in the overall integrated water resource management policy of each country.”

Efforts to increase awareness and find alternate solutions have been so intense that they have even touched religious frontiers with Qatar announcing plans to install water meters in mosques to keep a watch on consumption during the mandatory ‘wazu’ or body cleaning process before prayers.

In 2004, the UAE announced plans to use nuclear and solar energy to cut the cost of desalinating water. And, in September last year, Oman made public its intention to build the Gulf’s biggest dam in the Quriyat area. The construction will be completed in two years and augment drinking water supply by 30 million cubic metres.

According to the ‘Green Gulf Report’, jointly published in 2006 by the GRC and the New Delhi-based TERI (The Energy Research Institute), the ‘‘policies developed to increase water supply and conservation have been only partially successful in alleviating water scarcity. Policymakers have now shifted from entirely supply solutions to demand management”.

More importantly, the report says, there is a new emphasis on integrated water resources management, ‘‘which takes into account all the different stakeholders in water resource planning, development and management.”

The report recommends that ‘‘efficient sectoral water allocation cannot occur unless prices reflect the true costs of water provision and the scarcity value of water itself. Getting the price right at the sub-sectoral level is fundamental to achieving optimal water use.”

Raouf offered another suggestion. ‘‘The concept of ‘virtual water’ holds immense relevance for the water-scarce countries. By assessing how much water can be saved through the import of certain food items (particularly those that consume high amounts of water such as fodder for dairy production), and other products such as wheat, a huge amount of water can be saved,” he said.

‘‘The water problem in the region is not only an environmental issue; it is also an economic and security problem. The governments need to act right now in order to secure water needs in short, medium and long term for different sectors by using different policy options, technology techniques, or even political pressure and deals that can secure water supplies from allying countries,” said Raouf.