Desalination: How the Middle East is dealing with its water crisis

As I touched on in my second blog, the Middle East is in a water crisis. This has been brought on by severe droughts, inefficient irrigation techniques and careless water use. I believe that there is hope for the future, due to technological advances in methods to produce more freshwater which are being employed not just in this area, but in water stressed regions throughout the world. However this remaining a privilege enjoyed by wealthier countries only remains a sad likelihood.

The following diagram shows as an example, Saudi Arabia’s renewable water capacity compared the global average. You may have to look quite hard to spot the blue bar which represents Saudi Arabia! Despite this, Saudi Arabia has the third highest use of water per capita of any country worldwide behind the USA and Canada.

Source: 2015 Case Study on Saudi Arabia. Data adapted from this website.

Large scale desalination first emerged in the mid 1950’s, although techniques were developed in the 1600s for use on boats in the event of an emergency. However, technological and material improvements over the last two decades have led to huge advances in methods of fresh water production and also increased the efficiency with which water is used. There are two commonly used desalination technologies: thermal desalination and reverse osmosis. Thermal desalination produces a vapour of fresh water, whilst the reverse osmosis method uses high pressure and a membrane to separate fresh water and salt water.

Israel is a good example of where desalination has risen to prominence over the last decade. A country that in 2004 relied solely on its limited rivers, lakes and groundwater for it’s freshwater, then suffered from the severe drought which hit the Middle East around 2007. It now produces over 55% of its domestic water from desalination plants, which make water taken from the Mediterranean Sea suitable for drinking, and actually has a surplus of fresh water.

Conventional desalination is an energy intensive and costly process. It requires countries to be wealthy and also in relatively close proximity to the sea (not too far inland or at high elevation) for it to be cost effective, otherwise it is often cheaper to transport freshwater from places where it is not a scarce resource, than to desalinate and then transport sea water (Zhou & Tol, 2005). Transport of 1600km, or an elevation of 2000m roughly matches desalination costs. Desalination Countries with only a small amount of coastline relative to overall size such as Syria and Iraq may not find the costs of transportation further inland feasible.

The high energy cost of desalination is still a limiting factor for the poorer countries. It has been estimated that around 15% of domestic oil production in Saudi Arabia goes towards desalination. If increasing fresh water demand requires more and more fossil fuel burning to fuel desalination plants then there is of course a possibility of cycle in which climate change brought on by the release of greenhouse gases leads to droughts, and flash floods which can contaminate the water supply thus decreasing fresh water reserves further (DeNicola et al., 2015). 

There are other environmental impacts to be considered too. The discharge of highly saline brine solution which often has a raised temperature, has the effect of increasing salinity of nearby ocean water by 5-10ppm and increasing the temperature by 7-8°C (Dawoud & Al Mulla, 2012). This can create an adverse environment which can be fatal for marine life.

In an attempt to counter the negative environmental effects, renewable energy is being increasingly utilised to provide the power for desalination. A great, but small- scale example of this is on the Maldivian Island of Gulhi, where excess heat from the local power generator is able to produce 10,000 litres a day for the island’s 1200 inhabitants, reducing its reliance on imported water.

The following diagram, summarises the disparity of water use between the wealthy and less wealthy nations. It shows the total water used in countries which are rich due to their abundance of oil as a natural resource greatly surpasses the amount of water which is available as a renewable resource (which does not include desalinated water). In short, rich countries can afford to overcome their natural shortage of water whilst poorer countries can not.

Source: www.carboun.com

In my opinion, this demonstrates two things. Firstly, the importance of desalination and other methods of producing fresh water, but also that many residents of the countries which cannot currently afford to build these expensive plants are condemned to a life in which water shortage is a chronic problem. Water shortages spread discontent in areas and can lead to dissent against authorities. This of course was a contributing factor in the descent to civil war seen in countries such as Syria and Yemen, and has the potential to cause more conflicts in the future.