Freedom will not chase away the Arab world's triple crisis

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed 

Economic want and inequality as much as political repression incited the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. It is, of course, to be hoped that new governments in these countries, and other Arab leaders, will better address ordinary people’s grievances. But a mere change of government will not make these countries’ economic problems go away. The converging effects of population growth, climate change, and energy depletion are setting the stage for a looming triple crisis.

The Arab world accounts for 6.3 percent of the world’s population but only 1.4 percent of its renewable fresh water. Twelve of the world’s 15 most water-scarce countries – Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and Palestine – are in the region, and in eight, available fresh water amounts annually to less than 250 cubic meters per person. Three-quarters of the region’s available fresh water is in just four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

Water consumption in the region is linked overwhelmingly to industrial agriculture. From 1965 to 1997, population growth drove demand for agricultural development, leading to a doubling of land under irrigation. Demographic expansion in these countries is set to dramatically worsen their predicament.

Although birth rates are falling, one-third of the overall population is below 15 years old, and large numbers of young women are reaching reproductive age, or soon will be. The United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry has projected that by 2030 the population of the Middle East will increase by 132 percent, and that of sub-Saharan Africa by 81 percent, generating an unprecedented “youth bulge.”

The World Bank’s Water Sector Assessment Report on the Gulf countries, published in 2005, predicts that these demographic pressures will likely cause the availability of fresh water to halve, exacerbating the danger of inter-state conflict. Competition to control water has already played a key role in regional geopolitical tensions, for instance, between Turkey and Syria; Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority; Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia; and between Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan.

A halving of available water supplies could turn these tensions into open hostilities. Indeed, while economic growth, accompanied by greater urbanization and higher per capita incomes, has translated into greater demand for fresh water, the population movements that have resulted are now exacerbating local ethnic tensions.

As early as 2015, the average Arab will be forced to survive on less than 500 cubic meters of water per year, a level defined as severe scarcity. Shifts in rainfall patterns will certainly affect crops, particularly rice. A “business-as-usual” model for climate change suggests that global average temperatures could rise by 4 degrees Celsius by mid-century. This would devastate agriculture in the region, with crop yields falling by 15-35 percent, depending on the strength of carbon fertilization.

The cost of infrastructure capable of responding to the intensifying water crisis could amount to trillions of dollars, and its development would itself be energy-intensive. As a result, new infrastructure would only mitigate the impact of scarcity on richer countries.

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