The Middle East is rich in oil reserves, providing a huge portion of the world’s energy.
But what it has in abundance in hydrocarbons, it lacks in a resource that’s becoming scarcer
by the year: water.
The global average for one person’s water use is 250 liters per day.
By contrast, water use in the Middle East is more than double that, at an average of
about 550 liters per day.
12 of the 17 most water-stressed countries in the world are in the Middle East and North Africa.
60 percent of people in the region live in areas under severe water stress, and scientists
expect this to worsen as the climate warms.
In the last 30 years, rainfall in much of the region has dropped by more than 15%.
Many countries in this region have a "water deficit," that means they use far more water
than they receive in rainfall.
Without major changes to the way that we use water, this could threaten food supplies,
living costs, or even lead to conflict.
Research from institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations says that climate
risks will disproportionately affect the world’s poorest countries and people.
This applies to much of the Middle East, where countries like Syria and Iraq are struggling
with safe access to drinking water.
Wealthier countries like the United Arab Emirates are in a more comfortable position, as they
figure out how to maintain the green and lush tourist destinations they’ve built with
depleting resources.
Still, the UAE has come up with some interesting ways to produce and reuse its water.
So, are its techniques actually sustainable, and can it learn any new lessons?
How does a golf course like this stay green all year round?
I would say, nutrition program and a lot of water.
How much water do you use per year?
Per year. So, I've done the math, and it works out to be 1.7 billion liters.
Oh, wow. That sounds like a lot.
It is a lot.
In summer, it’s roughly about seven, six and a half million liters a day.
The Gulf region is a notoriously harsh environment, with hot and dry climates that can see temperatures soar
as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit in summer.
Yet here in the UAE, after just a few decades, a thriving metropolis has sprung up,
home to ten million people and a popular leisure destination for millions of tourists every year.
Tourism is an important part of the UAE’s economy, providing 12% of its GDP in 2020.
And one of its big tourist attractions, perhaps controversially, is the country’s 22 golf clubs.
Simon Winzar is the Director of Agronomy at Trump International Golf Club Dubai.
A lot of people look at this and say, "You're in the desert. This uses so much water."
Why build golf courses here?
Obviously Dubai is a tourist destination, as well as an expat community.
It brings in a lot of golfers to the city.
And you know, there is a demand for more golf courses because we are at capacity.
And most golf courses are.
So how is Simon and his team making the most of the limited water at their disposal?
One way is the golf course’s weather stations.
It's an underground network of infrastructure and it takes full-time maintenance.
This is obviously a lot of resources.
Is it really able to be sustained for the next 10, 20 years or more?
It's definitely sustainable.
It's not like we are using a drinkable water source.
It is treated sewage, so if we didn't have a green space, if we didn't have a golf course
to put this out on, to use it, the city, the municipality would be left with an abundance
of water and nowhere to put it out.
Each sprinkler on this course puts out 1.73 liters of water per second.
The golf course’s pump station has the capacity to release 220 liters of water per second.
What we're looking at is the main control panel for our pump station.
So, we can have a look at our flow totals, this is in gallons.
Are there any plans in place to improve efficiency to kind of lower the bills a little bit?
100%.
You know, every year, I would say about a third of my time is spent on irrigation.
We are constantly reviewing and auditing our system to make it more efficient.
For many in the Middle East, golf courses are an unimaginable luxury – simply providing
drinking water for a growing population is increasingly challenging.
And rain is a rare occurrence in the region, meaning natural groundwater sources and conserving
water are often not enough.
Dr. David Hannah, a professor of hydrology at the University of Birmingham, walked me
through how the region gets its water in the first place.
Is the Middle East running out of water?
The Middle East is located in an arid environment.
So, it has very limited conventional water resources, and some of the groundwater resources are saline.
They're salty, so they're not so easy to use.
In the Gulf Arab states, most drinkable water is produced in massive coastal desalination
plants using a process called reverse osmosis.
This is when seawater gets sucked into a membrane at high pressure to remove the salt.
The UAE’s desalination plants account for 14 percent of the world’s desalinated water.
And the Middle East and North Africa account for nearly half of the 95 million metric tons
of desalinated water produced each day worldwide.
This process is expensive, energy-intensive and sends highly concentrated salty brine
back into the sea, potentially harming sea life.
Besides desalination and reusing wastewater, the region is also exploring cloud seeding.
This involves releasing small particles of salt or iodide into clouds using planes or drones.
Water droplets then cluster around these particles, which should increase the chance of rain or snow.
The UAE’s National Center of Meteorology says cloud seeding can increase rainfall by
up to 25% and is cheaper than desalination.
Iran, Morocco and Saudi Arabia all have cloud-seeding programs, and other countries in the region plan to follow suit.
But scientists are divided over its effectiveness, and it only works if there are clouds in the
first place to do it.
The Middle East also isn't built for heavy rain, and this could cause problems if storms
become more frequent.
Yet, despite concerns around water, it’s not uncommon to find lush landscaping in several
of the region's cities.
I visited a nursery owned by Al Ryum Contracting, which has done the landscaping for iconic
UAE venues like Yas Links Golf Course, Expo 2020, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and theme parks like Legoland.
So, what does it take to make a desert country green?
Well, it takes water, and that's the most important thing.
And as you know, that's something that's very scarce in the desert.
Predominantly, we use TSE water, treated sewage effluent.
And that's what we use to water all of our plants and use all of our irrigation.
So where did these bad boys come from?
And who is ordering plants this massive!
These are from Madagascar, and they're actually for a five-star hotel in Dubai.
So, we've imported these recently, and we're acclimatize them for the next two, three months.
So how much water does a nursery like this use per day?
We use close to 800,000 gallons per day.
How do you make an operation like that sustainable?
Well technology has come a long way, especially in the irrigation field.
We have huge team of engineers who are qualified with sustainability.
It's very important being in the desert, that we conserve as much water as possible.
So there's different soil mediums that would help with water retention, so that the water
doesn't percolate or let's say, drain from the soil.
There's different kinds of additives, that will just hold the water so that we don't
lose it and waste it.
So, it gets recycled almost within itself in the plant.
But even with sustainability engineers on the case, landscaping gets through a lot of water.
I caught up with Will Bennett, an award-winning Dubai landscape architect, who thinks he’s found a solution.
Are you worried about the level of water use in this region generally, and the consequences of that?
Massively, yeah. You see this huge waste of water in every single project.
Look, why are we still building all of these landscapes that are so thirsty for water,
they require huge amounts of maintenance, a lot of inputs, a lot of time and energy?
And honestly, they have quite a huge carbon footprint.
No more lawns along the highway, no more rows of, you know, tropical palms, let's use the
plants that are designed to grow here, and really start to be more sustainable as a whole city.
If you design with the right sort of plants and landscaping the right way, you can really
turn down the water use.
We're measuring a few projects, and we've so far measured at least 60% reduction in
some of our gardens.
But I'm really confident that if we use true native plants, we can actually turn that down
to even 20% or even 10% compared with traditional landscaping here.
There are plants that grow here without any inputs and any water at all.
They have huge root zones.
And some of these root zones are so big that they can soak up water for as much as four
years without any irrigation. The effect is massive.
Water can start to be used for other things diverted to, you know, reforestation projects,
to more urban agriculture.
Have you seen a growth in interest in your business and in this type of business in the
last few years?
Massively, yeah.
I'd say just in the last one or two years, the trend is really taking off.
Few parts of the world are as water-scarce as the Middle East, and countries are increasingly
seeking more ways to conserve and produce this precious resource.
As droughts and scorching temperatures intensify, those that can cut waste and implement innovative
sustainability solutions may be the ones that avert a crisis.