Water security in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … a far-fetched dream?

DAMMAM – Environmental and water experts have warned that water security might be a far-reaching dream for the Kingdom.
Limited water resources such as groundwater are being depleted by greedy farmers who care about nothing but profits, they said. The claimed nuclear energy can help desalinate seawater and save the country from a looming disaster that future generations will experience. Al-Riyadh daily asked the experts about the challenges the state faces in ensuring water security.

Precious resource

Dr. Asad Abu Ruzaizah, president of the Saudi Society for Environment Sciences, said the country is running out of groundwater at an alarming rate. He stressed the important role citizens can play to mitigate the enormity of the problem and conserve this valuable resource. “Some people are not really aware that we have a water security problem,” Ruzaizah said. “The government spends a huge amount of money on the desalination process but this causes a tremendous negative effect on the environment.
“Moreover, strategic water reserves are poor in the Kingdom and other GCC countries and this fact makes the water problem a huge challenge for these countries.
“We have a poor water authority and low awareness levels regarding the importance of saving water. “More funding should go into developing and managing water resources and searching constantly for new sources.
“The water authority and other water agencies should be developed to deal better with this issue and achieve sustainable development for the next generation.”

New regulations to manage current reserve

Dr. Muhammad Al-Ghamdi, professor of King Faisal University’s School of Agricultural Sciences, disagrees with Ruzaizah. “Everyone is saying let’s find new water resources instead of searching for regulations that can lead to the wise management of current resources,” Al-Ghamdi said. “Unfortunately, there are no clear plans, programs, or strategies to help us achieve water security.” He said he wondered how this problem would be solved while farmers, led by greed, continue to waste groundwater and mismanage limited water resources. “The sad thing is facts and statistics indicate that our groundwater problem is getting worse every year. “I’m worried the next generations will encounter insurmountable problems solving this issue.”
Dr. Ali Ishqi, ecology professor at King Abdulaziz University, said the Arabian Peninsula has a severe water shortage. Ninety percent of its area is barren desert land while green areas account for 2 percent of the total area. Ishqi believed that mismanagement of water resources has largely exacerbated groundwater shortages.
He said the only strategy that can end this looming crisis is to make use of nuclear energy.
“The use of nuclear reactors is the best choice for seawater desalination.
“Solar energy is not. “To meet the water needs of a small city population, you will need to have so many solar cells on a very large area.”

Rainwater harvesting is the solution

Abdullah Al-Rasheed, economist, said the only option available to solve this crisis is to set up a national authority for rainwater harvesting, where rainwater is collected and used for irrigation, drinking, and other purposes. The next upcoming war will be for water, Al-Rasheed claimed.
He quoted a feature that National Geographic carried a while ago on the water issue.
The Kingdom’s groundwater resources used to stand at 500 cubic kilometers 40 years ago, according to the feature. So far the country has used 400 cubic kilometers, which means that one generation has consumed 80 percent of the country’s resources. The feature said the Kingdom now has no choice but to use seawater because the remaining groundwater will probably be consumed in a few years. Al-Rasheed said he hoped that the statistics mentioned in the feature were not true. “One thing remains true: we have squandered our groundwater and used it for farming purposes. “There is no point now of crying over spilled milk. “It’s high time we utilized rainwater.”
Al-Rasheed said every year there is 150 billion to 250 billion cubic meters of rainfall in the Kingdom, while the amount of desalinated water the public consumes annually is 3 billion. “This is a small amount compared to the huge quantity of rainwater available for us.” More

 

UNESCO Presents Views on Water Cooperation

September 2013: The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has released a report titled 'Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation,' which was published in the framework of the International Year of Water Cooperation.

The report brings together a range of water professionals and stakeholders to share their knowledge and experiences in water cooperation.

The report reflect the progress and challenges encountered in the fields of water management and cooperation around the world. It features chapters on, inter alia: water diplomacy; transboundary water management; water education and institutional development; financing cooperation; legal framework at the national/international level; water cooperation, sustainability and poverty eradication; and economic development and water.

The report includes articles presenting the views of experts on water cooperation from various regions, including: water diplomacy in the Middle East; transboundary water diplomacy in the Mekong region; the Nile Basin Initiative; efficient and effective cooperation in the River Rhine catchment; sharing water in Australia; regional water cooperation in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region; participation in the management of the Niger, Senegal and Congo river basins; the Murray–Darling Basin Plan; the transboundary ecosystem of Russia and Mongolia; Libya's experience in the management of transboundary aquifers; and transboundary groundwater resources management implemented in the Kumamoto region of Japan.

Issues addressed in the report include: climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction (DRR); agriculture; capacity building and education; financing; integrated water resources management (IWRM); managing water for livelihoods; poverty reduction and sustainable development; urban areas; and wetlands. [UNESCO Press Release] [Publication: Free Flow. Reaching Water Security through Cooperation] More

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Water Crisis Hitting Food, Energy – And Everything Else

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 22 2013 (IPS) - How much water does it take to turn on a light? It took 10,000 litres to make your jeans. Another three big bathtubs of water was needed for your two-eggs-toast-coffee breakfast this morning.

We are surrounded by an unseen world of water: furniture, houses, cars, roads, buildings – practically everything we use and make needs water.

“There is no way to generate energy without water,” said Zafar Adeel, co-chair of the UN-Water Task Force on Water Security and director of the Institute for Water, Environment and Health in Canada.

Even solar panels need regular washing to perform well. Wind energy might be an exception, Adeel told IPS from a water conference in Beijing being held during World Water Week.

There is growing recognition that peak oil is nowhere near as important as peak water because there is no substitute for water. The growing shortage of water — 1.2 to 1.7 billion people face scarcity — has alarmed many. Water has been identified as an “urgent security issue”, by a group that last year included both former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the InterAction Council, an association of 37 former heads of state and government.

It’s important that “water security” be recognised by the U.N. Security Council as either as a trigger, a potential target, or a contributing factor to insecurity and potential conflict in many parts of the world, said Adeel.

Defining exactly what the term “water security” means has been challenging, but UN-Water, the United Nations’ inter-agency coordination mechanism for all water-related issues, now has a working definition.

They have defined water security as: “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.”

The definition was released Friday on World Water Day along with an analytical brief “Water Security and the Global Water Agenda“.

“Water fits within this broader definition of security — embracing political, health, economic, personal, food, energy, environmental and other concerns — and acts as a central link between them,”says Michel Jarraud, Chair of UN-Water and secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

It is important to note that conflicts over water are rare. “Historically there hasn’t been a war between nations over water,” said Harriet Bigas, a co-author of the brief and colleague of Adeel at the Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

Driven largely by water and food shortages linked to drought in the Horn of Africa, almost 185,000 Somalis fled to neighbouring countries in 2011. In Sudan, violence broke out in March 2012 in the Jamam refugee camp where large numbers of people faced serious water scarcity. And in South Sudan, entire communities were forced to leave due to scarce water resources as a result of conflict in 2012.

Water insecurity can lead to cascading political, social, economic and environmental consequences, she said.

However, the norm is for nations and regional partners to work out water-sharing agreements, offering important opportunities for dialogue amongst traditional enemies.

“Water is a greater pathway to peace than conflict,” writes noted international water expert Aaron Wolf of Oregon State University. More

 

Climate change and water mismanagement parch Egypt

Climate change, a fast growing population, ill-designed infrastructure, high levels of pollution and lack of law enforcement have made Egypt a country thirsty for water — both in terms of quantity and quality.

The River Nile, which is considered poor by many experts and hydrologists, lies at lower altitude than the rest of the country. Massive electric pumps extract the water from the river’s bed and canals and direct it to industry, agriculture and for individual water use.

A significant portion of the water contained in Lake Nasser’s 5,000 square kilometer basin is lost to evaporation, while old networks of leaking pipes also deprive the country of satisfactory access to its most important resource: water.

In order to debate water scarcity in Egypt, its causes, and how climate change makes the issue more pressing than ever, as well as looking to solutions, a panel of experts were invited to participate in the 13th Cairo Climate Talk last week entitled “Growing Thirst: Sustainable Water Solutions for Egypt.”

Tarek Kotb, the First Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, and a member of the panel discussion, talked about the dwindling water share per capita with a sense of urgency. “Every year, the Egyptian population grows by 1.8 million, while the annual quota of Nile water allocated to Egypt, 55 billion cubic meters, has remained unchanged since the 1959 Nile Water Agreement,” he says.

While Egyptians in the 1960s could enjoy a water share per capita of 2800 cubic meters for all purposes, the current share has dropped to 660 cubic meters today—below the international standard defining water poverty of 1000 cubic meters.

Kotb estimates that Egypt is gradually going to leave the stage of water scarcity and enter a phase of drastic water stress in the next 40 years, if no sustainable water management is put in place.

“By 2050, there will be about 160 million Egyptians and only 370 cubic meters of water per capita,” he says. While Egypt has other options for its water needs, such as tapping into groundwater basins and desalinating sea-water, the bulk of water is still extracted from the Nile, leading to longstanding tensions with the other Nile basin countries.

The treaty signed under colonial rule in 1959 granted Egypt and Sudan most of the Nile water share, while upstream countries were given access to a very small allocation of water. Lama al-Hatow, a hydrologist and one of the founders of the Water Institute for the Nile (WIN) condemns Egypt’s historical and ongoing hydro hegemony, by which the country claims its entitlement to benefit from most of the Nile water.

“A lot of science has been published on how not to lose water if the Ethiopian Millennium Dam is built, but it is not given much attention by the politicians,” Hatow says. “The upstream countries have the right to develop,” she says, “and there are ways to make it happen without Egypt losing water.”

She adds that preventing water evaporation in Lake Nasser could even increase Egypt’s water share.

Kotb responding to her remarks, saying that Egypt is investing millions of dollars in Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia to overcome losses due to evaporation in marshes and basins. “We don’t deny these countries’ right to development; actually, we help them,” he said.

Claudia Bürkin, the Water Sector Coordinator for the German Development Cooperation and Senior Programme Manager at KfW Development Bank, explains that Egypt’s water resources face two main challenges: water loss and bad quality.

“Egypt loses about 50% of its freshwater through poor maintenance of supplies and distribution problems, and the water is polluted,” she says, stressing that a significant number of diseases are water borne. Polluted water also affects the ecosystems’ balance, the soil quality, and seeps into the aquifers. “Egypt needs to set up strong standards for water quality and control the drainage nutrients, pesticides and waste found in the water.”

Kotb admits that while most of the issues and potential solutions have been identified by the government, much needs to be done in terms of implementation of existing laws and stronger cooperation between ministries.

“Water management is not the mandate of the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation exclusively, which makes the implementation process so much harder,” he says.

A National Water Resource Plan was established a few years ago, Kotb says, to curb the amount of pollution in the Nile emanating from cruise boats, factories, industries and villagers deprived of a waste management system. As part of this, he explains, factories located close to the Nile or the canals have been moved further away from the water streams, and new industries will be prevented from setting up a plant within 20km from the water.

“Law 48 on pollution has been reviewed and the penalties will be tougher,” he says. Meanwhile, Hatow argues that enforcing stronger penalties is not the solution to prevent farmers from polluting.

“Instead of punishing them, we should give farmers incentives to make better use of water, and provide them with premium crops,” she says.

The conversation then shifted to the effects of climate change, which can already be felt in the Northern part of the Delta and in the Mediterranean coastal cities of Damietta and Rosetta. The gradual rise in sea levels taking place turns fields into barren land unfit for agriculture, and the sea water that infiltrates the Nile is reaching further and further away from the coast.

“In order to keep a good yield and maintain agricultural production,” says Kotb, “we need to use more fresh water to combat rising temperatures.”

Lama’s take on how to combat climate change is quite different from this. “We need to study community based resilience techniques to figure out how local and indigenous knowledge can provide answers and climate resilience.”

- See more at: http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/climate-change-and-water-mismanagement-parch-egypt#sthash.NavKkkxR.dpuf

 

Blue Gold: World Water Wars

Blue Gold: World Water Wars (480p) (cc)

Published onApr 3, 2012byImaginari Pacem

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http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MWGZ6S

"...In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.

Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.

We follow numerous worldwide examples of people fighting for their basic right to water, from court cases to violent revolutions to U.N. conventions to revised constitutions to local protests at grade schools. As Maude Barlow proclaims, "This is our revolution, this is our war". A line is crossed as water becomes a commodity. Will we survive?..."

Malcolm McDowell
Ric Davidge
Andres Barreda Marin
Danielle Mitterrand
Oscar Olivera
Jim Olson
Tony Clarke
Maude Barlow
Octavio Rosas Lando
Eduardo Hernando Halez
Robert Glennon
Ryan Schwebach
Michael Kravcik
Vandana Shiva
Peter Warshall
Helen Sarakinos
Wenonah Hauter
Kyang Hae Lee
Clair Muller
Oliver Hoedmann
Raymond Aurillier
Harry Ott
Daniel Vermeer
Wangari Maathai (Dr. Wangari Muta Maathi)
Jack Simes
Jon Steinhaus
Terry Swier
Chris Swier
Peggy Schwebach
Al-Hassan Adam
Virginia Setshed
Ryan Hreljac
Nancy Prest
George Morara Ugendi
Dr. Rosinha
Nelton Friedrich
Merle H. Jensen
Howard Dearborn
Noah Cottrell

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