The Middle East is short of water for two reasons. First its population continues to rise rapidly. The second and much more important reason is that the economies of the Middle East are not diversifying effectively. An economy that derives income from a wide range of productive and service activities is strong. A weak economy is an economy dependent on a narrow range of economic activities such as agriculture and oil rents.
The population of the region could double by mid-century; it has already increased threefold since the middle of the last century. The region is short of water because its water resources are only sufficient to meet the needs of about 200 million people and currently, there are over 300 million. There will be about 600 million later this century. Happily the Chinese have taken 300 million people out of the global water equation through a stringently applied birth control program. They have thus eased their own future demands on their own water resources. More importantly they have reduced the competition that the Middle East economies will face in the world food markets. China has reduced its future demand for food by the same amount that the Middle East economies will require during the coming half-century.
Those strategising water resource use in Middle East economies should look at these future global demand scenarios. They are much more important strategically than managing local water more effectively. The water security of the Middle East lies in the global trading system. The water available in the global system and linked with the food trade is big enough to meet future Middle East water demands. By contrast the management of local water cannot be improved sufficiently to meet the demands of another 300 million people.
The attempts to keep pace with the rising demand for fresh water in the region — for domestic use and for food — entered a new phase in about 1970. This was the year that major former water and food self-sufficient economies in the region, such as Egypt, began to import staple foods.
The international food trade is an ancient and very well organized system. Importing food has proved to be an effective remedy for water scarcity and food production problems for millennia. Today importing staple food is a much more politically and economically friendly approach than trying to mobilize new water in regions where rainfall is low and rivers are long but carry small volumes of water.
The Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates systems are vital but they carry much less than ten percent of the water in major rivers such as the Ganges, the Yangtse the Mekong or the Mississippi. These rivers also flow through regions with plentiful rainfall. By contrast, the Middle East rivers flow through deserts.
The food importing remedy is not politically and economically friendly because it matches expectations and long held prejudices. On the contrary importing food contradicts deeply held ideas and emotions based on thousands of years of water sufficiency. Food imports are friendly and acceptable because they are economically invisible and politically silent. The remedy is spectacularly effective in addressing the big regional water deficit — that is, the water needed to raise food. The invisibility of the solution makes it politically friendly.
Ninety percent of the 1,000 cubic meters of water needed by an individual per year are needed to produce their food and provide livelihoods for farmers. Only ten percent of an individual’s water needs arise from drinking water consumption — about one cubic meter per year, and for domestic use in the home — about 100 cubic meters per person per year. Most jobs — whether those of a government minister, a civil servant, a university lecturer, a teacher, a travel agent, a soldier, or a truck driver are negligible in their use of water. Much more water is used at home by these employed people than they use at work. They use perhaps100 cubic meters per year at home but less than two cubic meters per year at work.
To be secure, a water short economy must use water effectively. Economists say that there should be a high return on water. Looked at that way, a government official is many thousands of times more effective in providing a return on a cubic meter of than a farmer who devotes a cubic meter of water to irrigation.
The Middle East has enough water to meet the strategic needs for drinking and domestic use. Even economies extremely short of water such as those of the Gulf can easily desalinate water for drinking and domestic uses. They also have enough water to service strong and diversified economies through the development of jobs outside agriculture.
By the year 2000, most jobs in the region were already outside farming and the proportion is rapidly increasing. The economic transition from agriculture and oil based economies to economies dependent on non-farming livelihoods is the most important show in town. It is just as important for the water sector as for the economies generally.
Diversified economies — that is economies that derive incomes from providing a diversity of goods and more important services, in local and in international economies is the essential first step to security. It is especially true of water security. Shortages of water do not determine poverty; it is poverty that determines that people will be short of water. Lifting economies out of dependence on agriculture and on oil rent is the challenge: Not water scarcity.
(Professor Tony Allan is head of the Water Research Group at the School of Oriental and African Studies and King’s College London at London University and an acknowledged world expert on water issues. He argues that strategists addressing water security must change their focus and look at the need to diversify developing economies and the global pattern of trade in “virtual water” in the form of food imports rather than simply concentrating on local conservation measures — [email protected] www.soas.ac.uk/waterissues)