Dubai: Water demand in Dubai will follow the trend in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and increase by 58 per cent over the next 10 years to reach more than 155 billion imperial gallons, forcing the emirate and the water-scarce region to invest larger amounts in desalination initiatives, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has forecast.
The challenge posed by increasing water scarcity will, however, drive the region towards the adoption of more effective desalination as well as agricultural technologies. The GCC already accounts for 40 per cent of the world's desalination capacity.
"After a temporary respite in 2009-10, the risk of water shortages is likely to rise again. The next 10 years will see rising water demand, as the GCC's expanding middle class adopts an increasingly water-intensive lifestyle, featuring private swimming pools, gardens requiring big sprinkler systems, and even a growing interest in golf. Over the next decade, these countries will be among the world's highest per-capita users of water," the EIU wrote in a report released yesterday.
One of the examples of inefficient water use cited by the research firm is its deployment in agriculture, a sector that provides less than 5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). "Artificially cheap water has enabled the development of water-intensive crops in a region that has no natural advantage in producing these, but where governments provide generous subsidies to ensure future food supplies," it said.
Regionally, a combination of rising temperatures and expanding populations suggests that water will become increasingly scarce in the Middle East. Some of the less wealthy countries in the region are already looking more seriously at strategies to manage water demand, particularly in agriculture, with the use of drip irrigation.
In the longer term, there are concerns that the increasing salinity of Gulf water will make desalination more difficult and more expensive.
