The Arab world faces a major water crisis that timely and effective action can head off. The Arab world's population has tripled to today's 360 million in the last 30 years, and will rise again to nearly 50 million by 2050. Very little is being done to prepare for the inevitable crunch when there will not be enough water for the people in the Arab world. Some excellent thinking is being done in the conference halls, but this is not translating into government action.
The damning conclusion of last week's very timely Arab Forum for Environment and Development in Beirut was that despite the Arab world's water crisis being acute, the challenge could be solved by effective government and better management. But, as the final conclusion of the Forum sums up: "The root of the Arab water crisis is a set of political and management shortcomings: water institutions are fragmented, water legal systems are deficient, public water budgets are constrained, water policies are divorced from sound science, water investments are poorly targeted, funding and regulations for pollution control are insufficient, controls over proper aquifer use are lacking, and water prices are artificially low."
The Forum was right to offer useful answers to this challenge when it called on Arab governments to shift their thinking from a limited culture of offering more and more expensive and unrestrained supplies of fresh water, to a new culture of managing demand by improving efficiency, cutting losses, and protecting water from overuse and pollution.
The Forum was right to want every Arab water authority to shift its focus from being water provider to that of an effective regulator and planner, which would require these newly focused authorities to establish legal frameworks that enable private investments and public-private partnerships to provide clean water and safe sanitation, while maintaining transparency and accountability.
