Abu Dhabi - Country has intensified efforts to avoid a looming water crisis. Abu Dhabi's groundwater resources risk being entirely depleted within 24 years.
Published: Tue 22 Mar 2016, 2:53 PM
Last updated: Tue 22 Mar 2016, 10:53 PM
Worldwide, 3.5 million people die every year for lack of clean water. Nowadays, water scarcity is closely linked to energy challenges and food security, and officials all over the globe made a plea yesterday, March 22, for better care and management of our most precious resource during the World Water Day.
"World Water Day provides an opportunity to remember that water and energy are intricately connected and critical to achieving sustainable development," said Dr Nawal Al Hosany, director of the Zayed Future Energy Prize.
In recent years, the UAE has intensified efforts to avoid a looming water crisis, yet, the country remains the world's biggest consumer of water. In Abu Dhabi emirate, a person consumes on average between 565 and 920 litres/day, double the rate of many developed countries, and the consumptions rising steadily.
In 1997, for example, the rate was 492 litres per person/day, but by 2002, the rate had increased by 53 percent to 753 litres per person/day. The introduction of a water tariff in 2002 didn't slow down water consumption, which kept and, if left unchecked, the total annual demand could grow by 123 percent by 2030.
According to Environment Agency - Abu Dhabi (EAD) data, water demand in the emirate has now far outstripped the natural supply, the total water consumption here being about 26 times the natural production, and growing. At the current rate of withdrawal, the emirate's groundwater resources will be entirely depleted within 24 years. Since the 1960, when the first desalination plant was built in Abu Dhabi, desalinated water was the answer for building the economy and supporting a modern lifestyle. Not anymore.
With a population projected to reach four million in the next twenty-five years, there are limitations to current technologies, available energy and the environment's ability to absorb the impacts of this level of desalination.
Salinity in the Arab Gulf is already high at around 45,000ppm (parts per million), about 10,000ppm higher than in open oceans. Near desalination plants, which produce fresh water by extracting the salt out of sea water and then dumping the salt and the chemicals used to treat sea water back into the sea, the salinity levels climb up to 70,000 ppm.
At this level, most marine species cannot survive. Last year, EAD announced a strategy to identify the sectors directly responsible for the depletion of groundwater resources in the emirate and get them to reduce consumption to 717 million cubic metres per year by 2030, instead of the current 2.7 billion.
The Agency also urged the agricultural sector, which consumes 60 percent of groundwater in Abu Dhabi, to reduce usage by implementing modern crop irrigation techniques, plant local salt-tolerant crops and swap groundwater for recycling and treated waste water.
Dr. Khalil Ammar, head of National Resource Management section at the Ministry of Energy, supported this view with a presentation he made on Tuesday for the World Water Day. "Only 10 percent of UAE's agricultural farms are located in areas with good water quality," he said, adding that many farms throughout the Gulf region have been abandoned due to increase water salinity, caused by over extraction of water. Using treated waste water is one of the solutions for agriculture in UAE.
"About 35 percent of the 205 million cubic meters of waste water in the UAE is lost," pointed out Dr. Ammar.
Better management of all water resources, reducing over-irrigation, improving water usage efficiency, changing the crop types to more water salinity tolerant ones and stopping summer seasonal crops could potentially save 900 million cubic meters of water annually.
silvia@khaleejtimes.com
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