Unrest in the Middle East: A Problem Bigger Than Oil
As unrest, which began in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, now spills over into other Middle East nations, much of the attention has been on oil and whether the flow of crude will be disrupted. But the Middle East faces a bigger problem and one that will have long-term implications on its stability. In this region, water is more valuable than oil.
That doesn't mean oil isn't important to the region or to the numerous countries that rely on that supply. Reports of clashes in Bahrain, Iran and Yemen as well as a rare protests in Libya fueled fears the unrest could spread to other oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia. Crude futures rose Wednesday as a result. Iran, the fourth-biggest oil exporter in the world, added to those concerns on reports that it's sending warships through the Suez Canal -- the first time since 1979 that it has used the important oil-shipping route for this purpose, Dow Jones reported.
But fossil fuels are important to Middle East countries, for another reason entirely -- and it ties, curiously enough, back to water. Saudi Arabia is like many other Middle East nations where most of their fresh water comes from desalination, a process that turns saltwater into a drinkable supply. Typically, desalination occurs through reverse osmosis, a process where pressure pushes water through semi-permeable membrane that doesn't allow salt to pass. But there's a problem. It takes a lot of energy to power these plants. Meaning, oil is used for fuel to make water. Some 1.5 million barrels of oil are used every day to power Saudi Arabia's desalination plants, causing the price of desalinated water to rise with the price of crude.
The scarcity of water is an even bigger issue in Yemen, a country with few energy resources compared to its oil-rich neighbor Saudi Arabia. Yemen's water scarcity has created an agricultural crisis as well. Of the water they do have, a disproportionate amount is used to grow qat, a mild narcotic leaf that is exported all over the country, but has little economic productive value, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
The entire region, which accounts for 6.3 percent of the world's population, but only 1.4 percent of its renewable fresh water, is in a precariously tight spot, according to Nafeez Masaddeq Ahmed, executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development. Three-quarters of the region's available fresh water is in just four countries: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, he noted. Ahmed predicts that by 2015, the average Arab will be forced to survive on less than 500 cubic meters of water per year, which is considered as severe scarcity.
Water, not oil, will be and already is the main source of regional geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. For example, Jordan, Israel and Palestine; Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Bahrain and Jordan; as well as Turkey and Syria have wrestled for control of water resources.
Photo via Flickr user zbigphotography, CC 2.0
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