Supplementary Information
are discharged into the region’s rivers and streams causing the degradation in water quality.
9.
Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) for economic development
Without integrated and smart management of water resources, increased economic activity in the region will demand more freshwater and create more pollution, breaking the boundaries of sustainable water resource use. This will be aggravated by the impacts of climate change that are already affecting some of the region’s vulnerable rivers and ecosystems. At the same time, improved quality of life will increase the water demand. Cities should be willing to create more investment to attract residents and businesses, yet this will exacerbate the need for more water resources. Whether the region faces water quality, scarcity or variability issues, the anticipation of and response to water challenges will define its capacity for growth in the future. Through the integrated, sustainable and smart management and development of its limited freshwater, the region could overcome these challenges and enjoy environmental, economic and social benefits – indeed, accessibility to safe and clean water is considered a building block for the region’s economic and social growth. Rapid urbanization, however, could hinder the development of adequate water-supply and sanitation infrastructure. With the increase in population and urbanization, the annual per-person share of renewable freshwater resources in the region will fall from 850 cubic metres in 2015 to 650 in 2025 and 425 in 2050 (UNEP 2012)
10. Transboundary shared water resources
One of the biggest challenges facing the water sector in West Asia is coping with shared water resources, either surface water basins or groundwater aquifers. The region’s shared surface water basins are well known. Most of them have been subject to discussion and negotiation between riparian countries, and some, most notably the Jordan River Basin, have been overshadowed by sustained political conflict. There are seven shared rivers in West Asia. Surface water resources, mainly from river flows, are estimated at
93.1 billion cubic metres, concentrated mainly in the Mashriq sub-region, with 80.1 billion cubic metres available from the major shared rivers and the remaining 13 billion from smaller rivers, springs and intermittent wadi flows (UN-UNESCWA 2007). The Mashriq countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, rely on river flows supplemented by limited groundwater sources, while the remaining countries rely on flood water and shallow and deep groundwater sources. Total annual internal renewable water resources account for only 6.3 per cent of their average annual precipitation, against a world average of 40.6 per cent, due to the high rate of evaporation. The Arabian Peninsula is characterized by an arid climate with annual rainfall of less than 100 millimetres a year, with no surface water bodies, and depends mainly on non-renewable groundwater aquifers and desalinated water to meet its increasing water demand (UN-UNESCWA 2013).
Renewable groundwater in West Asia generally takes the form of shallow alluvial aquifers recharged by the main rivers and wadi flow, especially during major flooding events, and directly from rainfall in aquifer outcrop areas. Renewable groundwater, or the annual amount of groundwater recharge, is estimated at 15 500 million cubic metres (UN- UNESCWA 2005). In the Mashriq sub-region, the amount and frequency of recharge is much greater than on the Arabian Peninsula due to the higher volume and frequency of rainfall. The degree of groundwater exploitation in most countries of West Asia is much higher than the amount of recharge, leading to continuous and sharp declines in groundwater levels, extensive depletion of groundwater reserves and increased salinity.
There are extensive groundwater reserves of varying quality available in shared deep non-renewable aquifers covering most countries of the Arabian Peninsula, Jordan and Syria. The major shared deep groundwater sources are the Eastern Arabian Aquifers, Um Err Raduma, Dammam and Wajeed, located in the Arabian Peninsula; the Shaq aquifer between Saudi Arabia and Jordan, and the Basalt aquifer between Jordan and Syria. There are 18 shared groundwater aquifer systems within the region.
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