Climate change and water in the Middle East and North Africa

The Middle East and North Africa region has long been considered the hottest in the world, and it’s therefore no surprise that water scarcity in the area is an extremely significant issue. Both the heat and water shortage are amplified by climate change. As reported in an article by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, carnegieendowment.org, major rivers supply water to some countries in the region, but because these rivers cross national boundaries, international disputes about water use and availability frequently arise. It says for example, that there is disagreement with Ethiopia over its building of a hydro dam on its portion of the River Nile, which affects the volume of water flowing downstream into Sudan and Egypt. Carnegieendowment.org also states that Turkey and Iran have built dams on the tributaries of the Tigris-Euphrates river system and downstream “the consequences of this diminished river flow are already detrimental for Iraq, resulting in the lack of sufficient portable water in the city of Basra.” Winding its way from tributaries in Syria and Lebanon, the River Jordan flows basically between Israel and Jordan, but it has lost its significance: “Increasing aridification as a consequence of drought has been a key driver in the large reduction in flow of the Jordan River, with estimates of current flow being equal to 10% of the river’s historic average,” and the water itself is facing contamination from things like sewage and irrigation, according to the article.

Carnegieendowment.org states that groundwater is what some Middle Eastern countries have been resorting to, notably parts of Palestine and Libya. This is water that is pumped from beneath the earth’s surface and distributed for regular use. It mentions the success of “Libya’s Great Man-Made River Project, a large-scale water infrastructure project borne out of Libya’s dependency on groundwater and lack of surface water supplies,” but also concludes that “ultimately, groundwater is a finite resource, which presents the question of what happens to a huge, costly project like the Great Man-Made River Project when the aquifers on which it relies are no longer sustainable.”

The article argues that desalination is the primary method of achieving water sufficiency by many countries in the Middle East, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries like Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Oman are particularly dependent on desalination, which is the process of removing the salt and other elements from seawater. It claims “nearly half of the world’s freshwater desalination (45 percent) occurs in the Arabian Gulf, with several GCC members sourcing nearly 90 percent of their drinking-water needs from desalination.”

It further argues that “the accelerated advent of climate change has added a layer of complexity when it comes to the region’s climate and its water resources,” and contends that the intense heat in the region was demonstrated “in July 2023, the Persian Gulf Airport in Iran registered a heat index of 152°F…this extreme level of heat coincided with the hottest month ever recorded, where the global average temperature record was broken and set three times over a span of four days (from July 3 to 6).”

The article concludes that going forward, climate change will have a significant negative impact on the water infrastructures in the region: “Extreme heat, extreme weather and sea level rise threaten the reliability and durability of water storage, treatment and transmission infrastructure” and that agriculture and the increase in population size will put increased strain on the available water supplies.