Water Consumption in GCC Countries (Kuwait) and a comparison
to Africa.
Water is essential for all forms of
life and is a fundamental resource for human survival and socio-economic
development besides for maintaining healthy ecosystems. There is a consent rise
in the demand of water; it is rapidly becoming a scarce resource of countries
in the arid and semi arid regions.
GCC countries are a part of water
competitive world and water deficit grows larger with each year, making it
potentially more difficult to manage. Conventionally available water supplies
on renewable basis in these countries are simply insufficient to meet the
increasing water demands of the present modes of economic activities and
resource exploitation. The six counties that comprise the GCC occupy a total
land area of 2.7 million km2 and their combined population is currently over 30
million.
The increased pressure on water
resources due to
- Population growth- demanding not only more water for food, but also inducing changes in hydrological cycle,
- Changes in life style and urbanization
- Climate change, lead to water scarcity and increased competition for water between agriculture, industries and the rapid growing cities. Water tables are now falling in most of the arid and semi-arid region of the world.
Figure 1. Percentage of water use by
source (Year 2002)
In The graph we can see that over the
years and the years to come that as population increases, there is an increase
in the water usage. In 1950 when the population was below 5 million the water
consumption was less then 5 billion m3 by 1997 the population had
shot up to more then 20 million people and the water consumption was more then
25 m3 .
In table 1 we see the amount of ground
water and the surface water that is pumped out from each of the GCC country.
Saudi Arabia has the highest population and in order to compensate with the
population they pump a total of 6,080 and in contrast to that Qatar with the
least population pumps a total of 86. 4.This shows how population and the
amount of water pumped go together.
Escalating water demands due to the
population for the past 20 years in GCC countries has led to severe pumping and
overdraft of the local groundwater aquifers with limited extent and limited
annual recharge. These aquifers have been exposed in several locations to
unacceptable levels of piezometric declines and seawater
intrusions with disastrous environmental and socioeconomic impacts.
Surface water supplies to remedy the
resulting deteriorating situation, the only available options are limited to
the followings:
(1) Expanding groundwater exploitation
in newly developed, previously untapped, aquifers;
(2) Investing in large scale seawater
desalination technology; and
(3) Importing and transferring water
from neighboring countries
Table 4 consists of all the GCC countries and projections of
how the population has and will grow in the coming years . It also shows the
percentage ration increase with the comparsion of 1995 and 2025.
Table 5 consists of how much water in million cubic meters is
pumped out for what different sectors for all the GCC countries separtely.
Table 4 and 5 can be put as a comparsion this shows how when
population increases the demand for water increase espically in the domestic
sector. The agriculture and industry
sector increased their demand for water more industries were built and more
farm lands were made to help feed the population.
KUWAIT
Importing water from Karkheh Dam to
Kuwait
In 2003, an agreement was signed
between Iran and Kuwait to export water from Karkheh Dam to Kuwait. The plan on
the transfer of Iran’s water to Kuwait was brought to public attention in year
2000 and a group made up of British, Kuwaiti and Iranian companies took responsibility
for drawing the plan and the executive operations.
According to the proposed plan, Iran’s
water will be transferred to Kuwait via a 540 km long pipeline. A 330km
pipeline is to carry the fresh water to the farthest point on the bank of the
Arvand River, located in Abadan, the capital of the province, and will be
extended about 210km toward the coast of Kuwait under the sea. This pipeline
will supply Kuwait with 900,000 cubic meters of fresh water per day (10 cubic
meters per second) from Karkheh Dam, which is located in southern oil rich
province of Khuzestan, through the projected pipeline for 30 years. Based on
the preliminary estimations, the project will cost 1.5 billion dollars and the
revenue gained by Iran will apparently be spent on the construction of new dams
and water installations in Iran (Dawoud, 2006).
Kuwait,
officially the State of Kuwait
is a sovereign Arab
state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula
in Western Asia. It lies on the north-western shore of the Arabian Gulf
and is bordered by Saudi Arabia
to the south and Iraq
to the north . (Extracted from Wikipedia)
The Main water issues in Kuwait: -
- The rapid population growth
- High levels of per capita consumption
- Low reuse of treated waste water
Water Mangament in Africa
South
Africa is located, as one might expect, on the southern tip of Africa. It is
bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Indian Ocean on the south and
east. Along its northern border, from west to east, lie Namibia, Botswana, and
Zimbabwe, and to the northeast are Mozambique and Swaziland. Wholly-enclosed by
South Africa, and situated in its eastern central plain, is the independent
kingdom of Lesotho. (Taken from http://www.geographia.com/south-africa/)
Among
the challenges currently facing Africa, perhaps none is more important, nor
more often overlooked, than the threat to the continent's supply of clean,
fresh water. In most African sub-regions water is relatively scarce; throughout
the continent, even where the supply itself is adequate in quantitative terms,
the quality of the water is in serious decline. It is common knowledge that
water is an essential resource for life on earth.
What
is unfortunately far less common is the knowledge of how to tend to this
resource properly to ensure its availability for future generations.
The threats to Africa's lakes, rivers,
and wetlands come in several forms, among them eutrophication, salinization, and
pollution from industrial effluents and chemical run-off, and extend to broader
ecosystem concerns, including exotic weed infestation, declining fish
populations, habitat destruction, and loss of biodiversity. Most if not all of
these effects, however, can be traced to a generalized single cause: Human
activity. The introduction of alien fish species, devegetation of catchment
areas, use of pesticides, and disposal of wastes, to name a few examples,
driven by a variety of competing human needs, have severely impacted these
finely balanced ecosystems; current usage patterns are simply unsustainable.
Research can help us understand the chemistry, biology, and physics of the
relevant interactions; at least as challenging are the contextual socioeconomic
factors, such as population pressure, poverty, and North-South economic
relationships, which lie at the heart of the matter.
Continuing human population growth, and
the attendant increased demand for freshwater, are leading inexorably to what
may be called a world water crisis. In a microcosm, this growing competition is
nowhere exemplified more graphically than in the Southern African Development
Community (SADC), a region encompassing 12 countries, including Angola,
Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Seven of the principal river basins
of Southern Africa the Zaire, Zambezi, Okavango, Limpopo, Orange, Ruvuma, and
Cunene, with a total catchment area of 6.76 million square kilometers (km2) are
shared by at least two of the 11 countries (Mauritius is excluded).
The table here shows us the current trends in population
growth offer a bleak prognosis for meeting the escalating demand for water.
Total Fertility Rates (TFRs), the average number of children a woman bears in
her lifetime at the current birth rate, ranged from 4.1 in South Africa to 6.7
in Malawi in 1995, for a regional average of 5.6 (Table 2). However, the
average Crude Death Rate (CDR), the number of deaths per 1,000 of the
population, was estimated at 2.7 for the same period (Population Reference
Bureau, 1995). This combination of high fertility with low mortality has
generated an average annual population growth rate of three percent in the
region, for the period 1990-1995.
As shown in Table 4, if Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa, or
Namibia adopts a long-range, strategic perspective regarding its water
supplies, these countries will be competing for regional waters within the next
25 years. Furthermore, an increase of 25,000 irrigated hectares in one of the
basin states would translate into water requirements that are above the minimum
recorded flow of the Zambezi.
Pollution of Water Resources
Of major threat to the Zambezi Basin is
pollution from industrial and domestic sewage effluent from the main urban
centers in the region: Livingstone (population, 100,000); Victoria Falls
(25,000); Kariba (30,000); and Siavonga (20,000). Other growing population
centers are Binga, Kabane, Katima Mulilo, and Chirundu. Further from the river
but within the Zambezi Basin are large cities, including Lusaka and Harare. In
the case of Livingstone, liquid waste from several population centers is
discharged untreated into the Zambezi. As a large flowing river, the Zambezi
can purify itself. However, as the number of dams increases, creating standing
waters, the situation may change. Effluent collecting in the reservoirs may
lead to eutrophication problems.
The effects of pollution are already
evident. As shown in Table 6, the percentage of the population in both rural
and urban areas in the region who have access to safe water is less than 100
percent in all countries, except Botswana. In urban areas in particular, spontaneous
settlement the consequence of rural-urban migration due to drought or conflict
or both and the inadequacies of the urban management system mean that many are
without adequate sewage and refuse disposal services. The resultant waste may
then contaminate the available water supply by seeping into feeder streams.
Suggestions
Though the pollution of water resources has not created regional
conflicts, there’s a likelihood of such conflict will exist in the future. The
issue, however, has the potential of becoming a regional problem, particularly
regarding pollution from heavy metals, as evidenced by the existence of DDT and
heavy metals in Lake Kariba. The countries, therefore, need to cooperate in
formulating and monitoring legislation to prevent an increase of such a contamination.
This legislation should include the establishment of limits on the waste as
well as high punishments offenders. To ease the pressure on demand for the
waters in the basin, municipalities should consider using the option of recycling
treated sewage waste before they are released into the sea or other water
bodies. An example, instead of competing with consumers for drinking water,
municipal gardens can be maintained with treated sewage effluent.
- Leakages constitute a significant source of water loss. These losses can be minimized through the introduction of leak detection technology.
- The introduction of rational cost-pricing for water should be used to help curb the demand for water. As this will make people think twice before wasting water.
- Many of the region's water-related problems are linked to the rapid expansion and urbanization of its population. Therefore, the attainment of sustainable population growth should become a priority for states within the region. Doing so will require the integration of population factors in water development projects.
- Factors that should be considered are the fertility reduction; rural-urban migration; and the observance of standards of sanitation in all residential areas, SADC (Southern African Development Community) countries need to implement policies aimed at to retain their rural population.
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