Summary

At the cross-roads of three continents, the Mediterranean region is one of the most historic, culturally rich and diverse regions in the world. Endowed with unique geographical, ecological and geopolitical features, it benefits from the continuous exchanges across peoples and territories. In a constantly changing world, the Mediterranean faces serious natural and human-made challenges, including water scarcity, population growth, migration, industrialization, urbanization, pollution, and climate and other environmental change, along with the proliferation of energy-intensive lifestyles. These issues entail a rather blurry picture for the present and the future of the Mediterranean region, posing threats also to its water security. Not far from the Mare Nostrum, the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) extending, south of the Mediterranean Sea, from Morocco to Egypt and, east of the Mediterranean Sea, from Yemen across the countries of the Arabian Peninsula all the way to Syria is also facing a particularly alarming situation of water, making it as one of the most water insecure regions of the planet. Annual renewable water supplies in MENA are approximately 620 billion cubic meters (BCM), compared to Africa’s almost 4000 BCM, Asia’s 12,000 BCM, and a world total of approximately 43,000 BCM. In 2015, the World bank estimated that MENA’s per capita annual water availability is estimated on average of only 1,200 cubic meters, around six times less than the worldwide average of 7,000 cubic meters which is below the amount needed to prevent a significant constraint on socio-economic development, making the region the most water stressed in the world. Indeed, many MENA countries suffer from levels as low as 10 percent of the MENA regional figure, the same source reported. The region has approximately seven percent of the world’s population and less than 1.5 percent of the world’s renewable freshwater supply. This has led experts to predict that stress on water endowments and supplies in the region could in turn spur conflict and population displacement in the world’s most water-scarce region. The Southern and Eastern Mediterranean (SEMED) countries are a part of the MENA region, excluding some countries such as the Arabian Peninsula countries. SEMED countries are no exception to the situation in the MENA region. The SEMED region’s current water challenges go far beyond age-old constraints of water scarcity. While the region’s water scarcity challenges have been apparent for hundreds of years, newer challenges are adding both hazards and complexity. The complexities of the water-food-energy Nexus , climate change, droughts and floods, water quality, transboundary water management, and the management of water in the context of fragility, conflict, and violence compound the challenge of water scarcity. Meeting these challenges will depend as much on better management of water resources as on more and better resource endowments, infrastructure investments, and technologies.