Clean water is crucial to life on this planet. Undrinkable seawater covers 71% of the planet and contains 97% of its water supply. The Middle East is a region that suffers from a lack of renewable water resources. At the same time, the conflicts that began decades ago continue to this day. During this long period has the availability of clean water and arable land been affected? Let’s dive in and take a closer look.
Renewable Water Resources
The following map illustrates the world’s renewable water resources per inhabitant as of 2014.
As you can see, the Middle East stands out as the area on this planet with the lowest amounts of natural water resources.
The Data
Data for this blog post was obtained from the AQUASTAT Database. It is maintained by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and is available here. AQUASTAT regroups data per 5-year period and shows for each variable the value for the most recent year during that period, if available. Detailed information on how the data is collected by the FAO is here. The jupityer notebook used to prepare the data and visualizations can accessed at this Github repository.
Percent of Population with Access to Clean Water
AQUASTAT keeps track of various categories of data. the feature I’ve decided to focus on for this study is the percentage of the population with access to clean water. This data reflects all available sources of clean water, natural and imported.
Summary Statistics
After loading into dataframes using pandas, we can begin to summarize the data. Here are the summary statistics for the percentage of the population that has access to clean water. The table includes all fifteen countries in the region grouped by year.
Two important observations stand out. First, the statistical mean was never below 85% and along with the minimum, has increased at every period. In addition, more than 85% of the population has had access to clean water in the past 25 years.
What is the Trend?
Let’s start visualizing the data. Clearly we see a slowly improving situation. In all but two countries, the percentage of the population with access to clean water has increased over time.
A Deeper Look
The data begins to tell a story. But to complete the narrative, other factors should be pointed out.
The GDP Effect
Do high income countries fare better? Below is a scatter plot of clean water access in relation to GDP per capita. The plot includes a linear regression line with marginal histograms and kernel density fits.
There does seem to be a correlation between GDP and access to clean water. While more in-depth study is needed, wealthier nations can and do spend more on infrastructure and importing clean water.
The Drought of 2007
Beginning in 2007, the Middle East experienced the worst 3-year drought on record. Most governments in the region were forced to impose water restrictions and many farms lost their crops entirely. As the drought continued the water table level fell. Farmers drilled deeper, searching for any available water left underground. The wells eventually ran dry, forcing most farms to shut down. In Syria, it was reported that more than a million farmers joined massive shantytowns on the outskirts of Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and other cities hoping to find work.
According to the authors of a 2015 paper “Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent Syrian Drought,” published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the lack of water was in large part to blame for the conflict in Syria. “The rapidly growing urban peripheries of Syria,” they wrote, “marked by illegal settlements, overcrowding, poor infrastructure, unemployment, and crime, were neglected by the Assad government and became the heart of the developing unrest.”
Technology Brings Hope for the Future
Developments in Desalination
In the midst of the drought, Israel, like every other country in the region, was running out of water. Today it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was achieved in part by conservation and reuse, but the biggest impact came from new desalination plants. The other big player in the region is Saudi Arabia with 27 desalination plants that account for 70% of the Kingdom’s drinking water. The International Desalination Association claims that 300 million people get water from desalination.
Here are some of the latest developments in desalination technology:
- Scientists at the University of Manchester in the UK have developed graphene oxide membranes with holes small enough to filter out salt.
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New desalination process developed using carbon nanotubes at the New Jersey Institute of Technology
- New chemical-free desalination tech helps bring water surplus to Israel.
The opportunity for water diplomacy
Israel is required by the 1995 Oslo II Accords to supply the West Bank with water but the Palestinians still receive far less than they need. In the peace process, water has been used as a negotiation tactic, but now that Israel has more water available, many observers see the opportunity to depoliticize it. A ‘Water Knows No Boundaries’ conference in 2019 will bring together water scientists from Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Closing Thoughts
Our need for water in the future will only increase. Despite political disagreements and cultural clashes there are those working to develop technology that improves lives. If you are interested in learning more, check out the links below.