By Arvind Nair

WATER crisis in Qatar, as indeed in the Gulf and the rest of the world, threatens future progress and impedes efforts to alleviate poverty.

To drive this point home, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s Doha office has brought out a book called Policy Perspectives for Ecosystem and Water Management in the Arabian Peninsula.

Fresh water resources in the region are extremely limited, and yet the demand for them is increasing. As a consequence, much of the available freshwater resources have been depleted, and in some cases polluted. Ground water levels are falling in many areas, and often lead to seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, the book says.

"In view of these stresses on existing freshwater resources, seawater and brackish groundwater are now considered essential resources for freshwater production through desalination", the editors of the book say.

Four of the six GCC countries, including Qatar, are rated among the 10 most water scarce countries in the world. Kuwait (10 cu m/person/yr), the UAE (58 cu m), Qatar (94 cu m) and Saudi Arabia (118 cu m) rank first, third, fifth and eighth respectively in the world in terms of lowest domestic water availability per capita.

The situation in the other two GCC countries, Bahrain and Oman, also is also uncomfortable. These countries over-utilise 2.8 and 1.5 times, respectively, their annually renewable water resources, the book cautions.

All the GCC countries have made substantial progress in their respective campaigns for water resources management over the last decade, especially in the area of development of non-conventional water resources.

However, increased co-operation and collaboration, both within and among the member countries is urgently required in order to satisfactorily implement the numerous action plans that have been called for in water resources country policies and strategies, one of the articles says.

The recent formation of the GCC Water Resource Committee is a positive step towards international co-operation in this regard.

The six countries occupy a total land area of 2.7m sq km. Their combined population is currently more than 30mn and is expected to exceed 40mn by 2010. Over the last quarter of a century there has been a three- to four-fold increase in population and total water use respectively. At the start of the third Millennium all GCC countries, except Oman (583 cu m/cap/yr) fell in the critical water scarcity category: <500 cu m renewable water/cap/yr.

Total water demands are expected to increase 36% over the next decade. Today 91% of the combined total water demand is abstracted from groundwater, 7.2% by desalination of ground and seawater and the remainder from treated effluent and surface water.

On average, agriculture accounts for 78% of all water used and the current deficit of water resources is estimated at 15bn cu m, the book says.

Water extraction, production, as well as utilisation, particularly in the industrial and agricultural sectors, have an impact on ecosystems. Examples of positive impacts include increases in agricultural productivity by converting desert rangelands into irrigated agricultural systems and provide freshwater for urban usage.

There are also some undesired harmful effects, such as soil and water salinisation, thermal and chemical pollution, loss of habitat and biological diversity, declining productivity, and irreversible ecosystem degradation, such as local destruction of rangeland vegetation due to groundwater depletion, the editor say.

According to them, there are two necessary pre-requisites for mitigating water-related harmful effects on ecosystems and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the freshwater resources. There should be a sound scientific knowledge of the state and trends of water resources and ecosystems, both natural and man-made, and their interactions with each other and the society.

Also, there should be a political will of the authorities to take actions in accordance with science-based policy guidelines for the sustainable management of water and ecosystem resources, the editors say.

The book has articles written by a number of experts from the field and is edited by Kamel Mostafa Amer, Benno Boer, Michael C Brook, Zafar Adeel, Miguel Clusener-Godt, and Walid Saleh.

The preface is written by Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, Unesco special envoy for freshwater and president of AGFUND. The foreword is penned by Prof Dr Walter R Erdelen, assistant director-general for natural sciences for Unesco; and Dr Ralph J Daleh, director of UN University, International Network on Water, Environment and Health.