DEAD SEA, Jordan, 2 June 2004 — The environmental and economic aspects of water consumption took center stage in an address to the Water Demand Management (WDM) Conference on Monday. “The increasing economic and environmental cost of tapping the water supply is no longer practical,” said Dr Mahmoud Abu-Zeid, minister for water resources and irrigation in Egypt.
The minister acknowledged the threats caused by climate change had happened before, but “never when so many hundreds of millions of people were at risk. Water has moved up the global agenda.”
Between 70 and 80 percent of wastewater in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is discharged untreated, with Egypt averaging better at 46 percent. This, he pointed out, creates difficulties for the environment and water resources.
Around the world, more than 260 river basins are accessed by more than one country and most of them are not covered by agreements over their use. “Without agreements, we face many problems of peace and security,” he said. Egypt recently held negotiations with Uganda - the source of the Nile - over water rights.
The Egyptian minister focused on the importance of demand management as opposed to supply management in conserving water. “Policies should regard the whole set of technical, institutional, legal and operational approaches to water resource management,” he said, “and involve the people who use it in the decision making process.” To achieve this, an investment of $180 billion a year, mainly in the developing world, was needed to achieve water equity by 2025. “Currently, there is only $80 billion a year available,” he added.
Director of Research for Friends of the Earth, Dr. Brooks, in his review of the previous four water forums, suggested that water was an issue of equity as well as management. “WDM has not advanced rapidly and we still have a supply mentality,” he said, adding his surprise at “how little of water demand management was concerned with saving water and was to do with saving money.” The issues, he told the forum, focused more on describing and managing the current situation rather than on “what could be.”
“The most important concern,” Brooks said, “is that water management is advancing rapidly in MENA but water demand management is not.” He noted that in the MENA countries, involvement by private investment in water management has been mainly limited to urban areas. “It is not clear whether public and private partnerships have become a tool for efficient water management,” he stated. Highlighting the agricultural sector, which uses an average of 80 percent of the water in MENA countries, he said, “Where farmers have become involved at ground level, it becomes more efficient.”
Dr Brooks thought that using WDM techniques developed in industrial countries and transferring them to developing ones changed their focus substantially. “In western countries, WDM will reduce water use,” he said, “and the saved water will be used by someone else.” However, in the developing countries where water use per capita is already very low, “management of water is an equity issue, not a saving issue.”
