Minister seeks strategy to ensure better management of demand for water

Abu Dhabi: Water is the primary challenge in the UAE, Rashid Ahmad Bin Fahd, Minister of Environment and Water, told the Federal National Council on Tuesday.

Quoting General Shaikh Mohammad Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, "water is more precious than oil", Bin Fahd said joint efforts are needed in the agricultural sector to ensure long-term security for the national water supply.

"We need to shift from the management of water supply to the management of its demand. Growers need to move from traditional agriculture to hydroponically grown vegetables and salt-tolerant cultivations," the minister said as he faced questions from members of the House about assistance for the eastern and central UAE's drought-hit farms.

Food security

Mosabah Al Katbi, a representative from Sharjah, said hundreds of drought-hit farms in the central and eastern areas, which used to meet needs of locally grown vegetables, have been completely destroyed.

"These farms are now used as rest houses after rains severely decreased and wells dried up. Now we must import food, prices of which are continuously increasing, and food security is adversely affected."

The member demanded a solution to the problem at the federal level, asking for how long would the farmers wait for legislation to address this problem.

The country has no rivers, minimal rain, and it has drained most of its underground aquifers, which cannot replenish themselves to meet demand.

The only source of fresh water is desalination, which is both expensive and energy intensive.

The minister said more than 2 billion cubic metres of water is withdrawn from underground every year — 14 times the rate of recharge — which is not sustainable. "This is a national issue, which requires long-term solutions. He admitted that the solution cannot be pumping costly desalinated water into wells as each cubic metre of desalinated water costs more than Dh11.

However, given that water is expensive to produce, it is vital that the UAE develops a strategy to treat it as the costly resource that it actually is, rather than a free commodity that people can use and waste as they wish. A shocking 76 per cent of the country's water goes to agriculture, leaving industry and domestic use a minuscule 24 per cent of the total. Irrigation is a notoriously wasteful way of handling water. Therefore, to achieve a balanced long-term strategy, the country will need to review how it manages its agriculture.

Oversight

Bin Fahd said his ministry has plans to ensure water security include getting a law on water resources issued to regulate water use, punishing waste and pollution, and strengthening the ministry's oversight of water resources, building of 116 water dams and projects for monitoring quality of underground water.

The legislation would also create a water committee that includes federal and local authorities. Each UAE resident uses 550 litres of water a day, the highest rate in the world. The global average is 250 litres.