The per person share of fresh water resources in the Middle East region is 10 per cent of the world average and is projected to decrease by 50 per cent by 2050 if current trends in population growth and consumption patterns continue, according to figures released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). “Only four or five countries in the region are not considered water scarce, and there are four to five at risk of absolute water scarcity. This occurs when a country records less than 500 m3 of water per year per capita,” said Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, FAO assistant director-general and regional representative for the Near East and North Africa. With the current rates of population growth, the Near East and North Africa region (NENA), representing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) but excluding Israel and Turkey, will have to feed 200 million additional people by 2050. This will be nigh-on impossible as while the agricultural sector consumes 85 per cent of the fresh water in the NENA region, its productivity does not match with the needs of the populations. FAO expects the total demand for cereals in the region to double to approximately 200 million tonnes by 2050. Moreover, some 40 to 55 per cent of the arable land in the region is degraded, as insufficient drainage and irrigation at low levels of efficiency, among other factors, are causing the progressive salinisation of soils. Growing urbanisation also reduces farming and makes less land available for agriculture. “The problem will only intensify if the current patterns continue, “Ould Ahmed told reporters during a media briefing in the FAO premises in Cairo this week. Next week, water experts from inside and outside the region are convening in Amman to discuss the problem further and conclude draft recommendations to deal with it. “In Amman, we will focus only on agricultural water security,” Ould Ahmed said, adding that the four-day event would discuss a collaborative strategy on agricultural water management and food security in the region under the auspices of the FAO and 12 other partners. The study from which this week's figures come was prepared within the framework of the Water Scarcity Initiative in the Near East and North Africa that the FAO launched earlier this year. The outcome of the Amman discussions will also be included in the study and presented to the ministers of agriculture of the region, who will be meeting in Rome at end of February for the FAO's Near East regional conference. This will feed into the Regional Collaborative Strategy on Sustainable Agriculture Water Management that FAO member countries are currently developing. Climate change is also likely to exacerbate existing problems, the FAO has said, with agricultural production in the region being likely to suffer from higher temperatures, droughts, floods and soil degradation. The subsequent decrease in production could contribute to increasing NENA's current dependence on wheat and rice imports and further threaten the food security of many countries. In Egypt, climate change could cause significant variations in the annual Nile flood, which provides the country with more than 97 per cent of its renewable water resources. According to the fact sheet to be distributed in Amman nest week, estimates show that a 0.5 m rise in sea levels as a result of climate change might accelerate desertification in the form of increased soil salinity, leading to a loss of part of the agricultural land of the Nile Delta. Egypt suffers from a “water gap” of more than 23 billion cubic metres a year, being the difference between the 55.5 billion cubic metres it receives from the Nile and its consumption of nearly 78.5 billion cubic metres. With 700 cubic metres of water per capita per year, Egypt is on the border between countries that are “relatively stressed” in terms of water resources and those that are “absolutely stressed,” Ould Ahmed said. Negative trends in rainfall patterns are also projected for countries like Morocco, Algeria, Syria and Iran. As the water supply for agriculture in the region cannot be increased, its efficient use will need to be improved, said Pasquale Steduto, FAO deputy regional representative for NENA. Better recycling of waste water is one option, this being defined as the combination of liquid waste discharged from domestic households, farms, institutions, and commercial and industrial establishments, which is eventually mixed with groundwater, surface water, and rain water. “The problem is that the public is not willing to eat food that is watered with sewage water, for example, though this can be used for forestry,” Steduto said, adding that “this water in fact contains nutrients that can reduce the use of fertilisers.” However, the water needs to be treated before its reuse as it can pollute the soil and underground water. Steduto said that in Jordan waste water was used to cultivate forage for livestock, but that there had been problems since the water had not always been correctly treated. Regarding the possibility of greater desalinisation of sea water, Ould Ahmed said that this was not economically viable. “The cost of the energy used for pumping the water and during the desalinisation process is very high,” he said, adding that there had however been reductions in costs of some two-thirds due to the use of solar energy. But desalinated water was still too expensive for use in agriculture, and there have been environmental concerns. “What are we going to do with all the extracted salt,” Ould Ahmed asked. As a result, increasing the productivity of the available water is the recommended approach to the problems of water scarcity. “In such growing water-scarce environments, improved productive efficiency, meaning more crop per drop, and allocative efficiency, meaning more value per drop, are both needed to meet food security needs,” he said. Ould Ahmed added that in addition to minimising water losses, countries should choose crops that bring in more money, “either wheat [for local consumption] or tomatoes to increase exports.” Ould Ahmed said that Egypt had good experience of water management and was one of the countries where water efficiency had been highest in recent years. “Egypt has one of the most complex irrigation systems in the region. Little water is wasted in irrigation as it is recycled one way or another in the system,” he said. Egypt's irrigation network depends entirely on water from the Aswan High Dam, which feeds the more than 18,000 miles of canals and sub-canals that push water out into the country's farmlands. Steduto said that Egypt was optimising the efficiency of the water used in irrigation. “The FAO has been monitoring the productivity of wheat by remote sensing all over the world, measuring the crop yield per acre per cubic metre of water use, and Egypt ranks first worldwide,” he said.
