A scarcity of fresh water has left the UAE relying on desalination to quench an unprecedented thirst brought on by the country’s expansion. But the effects of the policy are threatening to destroy natural supplies and create an ecological nightmare.

From Morocco to Iran, no country has less renewable water per capita than the Emirates. Galen Clarke / The National By Jonathan Gornall “Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.” Like the becalmed seamen of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the people of the ocean-lapped UAE are in a similar dilemma when it comes to water supply. One liquid – oil – has shaped and made possible the astonishing development of the Emirates, a country whose achievements have come despite the absence of another – fresh water. The UAE’s demand for water, growing yearly in pace with the nation’s expansion, is insatiable and insupportable. With extremely limited natural supplies, the UAE and all its mighty ambitions and achievements – from desert golf courses to the world’s tallest building – are utterly dependent on water drawn from the sea, as are every man, woman and child who lives here. When it comes to water, the UAE is living beyond its means, trapped in an unsustainable spiral. Its per-capita consumption is among the highest in the world. Its natural groundwater supplies, pumped in an uncontrolled manner for decades, are being drained 24 times faster than they can be replenished, leaving them increasingly polluted with salt water. Farming, one of the smallest parts of the economy, consumes vast amounts of water. And waste from desalination leaves land and sea increasingly polluted. … Today water, apparently unlimited, cascades in fountains, is sprayed over lush golf courses and trickles down city streets bordered by generously irrigated grass and plants – sights that would have reduced a Bedouin of the recent past to tears of wonder, or dismay. … Worse, these countries are destroying what they have: “The volumes of water withdrawn far exceed natural recharge rates, with the result that groundwater resources, both in terms of quantity and quality, are seriously threatened”. According to a presentation to last month’s World Water Week conference in Stockholm by Shawki Barghouti, acting director of the Arab Water Academy and director-general of the International Centre for Biosaline Culture, the UAE has the lowest renewable water resources per capita of all 18 countries across the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco in the west to Iran in the east. …

Rubbing salt into the wounds