A Palestinian boy squirts water from a tap in the street on March 20, 2014 as the construction of a major seawater desalination plant launched by the European Union (EU) and UNICEF began in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip. (MOHAMMED ABED/AFP/Getty Images)[/caption]In Saudi Arabia, the “desert kingdom,” Prince Mohammed Al-Faisal was a pioneer in the quest for new sources of water. The prince, a son of King Faisal, was a founder of the country’s Saline Water Conversion Corporation, created in the 1960s to produce and distribute drinking water distilled from sea water. Today Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest producer of desalinated water. More than half the country’s water for household and personal use comes from 27 plants, on both coasts, and more are under development.
Prince Mohammed had other ideas, too. He was a prominent backer of proposals to tow icebergs down from the Arctic to melt them and capture their water, which is fresh, not salty. He also thought it might be useful to take advantage of President Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ campaign to set off a controlled nuclear blast in the desert of the Empty Quarter, to create a giant reservoir.
In Istanbul last month, he was scheduled to discuss the Middle East’s looming water crisis with a small group of participants in a conference on the subject convened by the Hollings Center and the Prince Mohammed bin Fahd Strategic Studies Program of the University of Central Florida. He was ill and unable to attend, but it turns out that his daughter, Princess Reem, shares his zeal for the subject and wanted to have the conversation. She is a world-renowned photographer and an outspoken voice on social issues in the Kingdom, but is also well informed about water issues and has strong opinions about them.
The news from her home country at the conference was generally upbeat. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest country without a river, has made giant strides in desalination—Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest producer—and in waste water management, to the point that some used water from mosque ablutions is recycled for use in toilets. Leaks that cost the distribution system more than 25 percent of its water are being plugged. And most important, Saudi Arabia has revised its agricultural policies, which were draining its underground supplies to produce unsustainable crops. At one time, the Kingdom was the fifth- or sixth-largest exporter of wheat in the world. Now, it has banned wheat production as of 2016.
About time, Princess Reem said, adding that the decision is “fixing 25 years of bad policy.” She said her country has not done enough to educate its people about the need to conserve water. The message could be spread through the mosques, she said, because in the Hanbali School of Islamic law, waste of God’s bounty is sinful. The developer of that school, the 9th-century scholar Ahmed Ibn Hanbal, was careful not to let so much a drop be spilled as he washed before prayer, the princess said.
On the other hand, Princess Reem, whose mother was Egyptian, held out little hope for her mother’s homeland. Its population has grown to the point where its sole water resource—the Nile River—can no longer sustain it, she said, a problem that will only get worse if Ethiopia goes ahead with its plan for a giant hydroelectric dam on the Nile’s headwaters.
Participants in the three-day conference heard nothing that would alleviate her gloomy assessment of Egypt. In fact, as the discussions proceeded, it was apparent that the countries where the water situation is most dire are ones least able to deal with it, because of armed conflict, political paralysis or lack of money—or, in the case of Yemen, all three.
Yemen emerged as the country with the most acute water issues. According to the World Bank, more than half its people lack access to fresh water, and the country’s limited supply is being drained by the widespread cultivation of qat, a plant with no nutritional value. Chewing qat, a mildly narcotic leaf, is Yemen’s national pastime, and no government has ever produced a credible plan for reducing the acreage dedicated to it.
Also on the critical list: Syria, because of the war, Libya, because of ill-advised water policies in the Gaddafi era—now compounded by instability—and Jordan, always short of water and now coping with the needs of tens of thousands of refugees from Syria. Jordan, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “continues to provide asylum for a large number of Syrians, Iraqis and other refugees, despite the substantial strain on national systems and infrastructure. This pressure has become even more acute over the past two years, as the global financial crisis has had an impact on Jordan's economic situation and infrastructure for water, electricity, waste management, education and health care.”
Jordan is at least receiving help from Saudi Arabia, the United States and other countries, and its problems could be alleviated if its neighbors’ conflicts ended and the refugees went home. There is no such light at the end of the tunnel for Yemen, or for Egypt, which has twice as many people as it did 50 years ago but with no corresponding growth in its water supply. Saudi Arabia has promised billions of dollars in aid to Egypt, but no amount of money can make those people go away, or increase the flow of the Nile. Princess Reem won’t run out of water issues to think about in the foreseeable future.
All views expressed in this blog post are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, The Majalla magazine.
