Shipping fresh water to Qatar from the Southern Patagonian Ice Field in Chile, which is about 14,360km or 7,754 nautical miles away, might appear to be a far-fetched idea now. But, going by the ever increasing rates of water consumption and considering that Qatar has the world’s highest per capita water use, one of the lowest levels of rainfall and is heavily dependent on seawater desalination, it may prove to a be an option in the not too distant future.
Gulf Times reported the suggestion from Chile the other day, quoting the Latin American country’s ambassador to the UAE, who also covers Qatar. The envoy explained that a trial project to export fresh water to the UAE is underway and the first shipment is expected to arrive in the next two or three months.
Qatar National Development Strategy 2011-2016 has stated that few tangible aspects of Qatar’s life and economy need efficiency reforms as much as water - crucial to all human activity but in scarce supply. The country’s reliance on desalination, groundwater and recycled water, are all subject to inefficiencies that may create stresses and eventually pose a threat to water security or require large investments to ease shortages, it has been cautioned.
Desalination, which accounts for about half the water used in the country, depends on a costly and energy-intensive cogeneration process that uses large swathes of coastal land and requires seawater that does not exceed set levels of salinity.
With rapid population growth and urbanisation, the use of desalinated water has tripled since 1995, reaching 312 million cubic metres in 2008.
Losses of desalinated water due to leakage are high by international standards. Some estimates put network losses as high as 30%–35%, compared with an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member-states average of 18%. Leakage in the distribution system for desalinated water costs as much as QR1bn a year.
Fresh groundwater drawn from natural aquifers accounts for about 36% of water use. An estimated 250 million cubic metres of groundwater are extracted each year, mostly for irrigation, five times the 50 million cubic meters of freshwater recharge that comes from Qatar’s meagre rainfall. With demand far exceeding the recharge rate of aquifers, Qatar’s freshwater reserves are under stress and at risk of exhaustion.
Much of the groundwater is used for flood irrigation of open fields, with high levels of evaporation. Recycled water, or treated sewage effluent, accounts for the remaining 14% of the water used in Qatar. But because supply currently outstrips demand, about 40% of treated sewage effluent is discharged into septic lagoons.
Qatar could make far more extensive use of recycled water, which is a quarter as expensive to produce as desalinated water. Inefficiencies are also evident on the consumption side of the water equation.
Though the government has launched some water-saving initiatives, more remains to be done if a crisis is to be averted, failing which Qatar will have to look to Chile or other regions of the world to import fresh water.