Water Stress in the Middle East: Why 2023 Is a Turning Point for Regional Water Policy

The Scale of the Crisis

The numbers are stark. The MENA region is home to 6 per cent of the world's population but possesses less than 2 per cent of the world's renewable freshwater resources. Of the 17 most water-stressed countries globally — as ranked by the World Resources Institute's Aqueduct tool — 12 are in the Middle East and North Africa.

Water stress is not simply about scarcity. It is the ratio of water demand to available supply. A country can have absolute water scarcity (low total resources) but low stress if demand is managed effectively. Conversely, a country with moderate resources can experience extreme stress if extraction exceeds sustainable yield. In the MENA region, both conditions converge: absolute scarcity compounded by demand that far outstrips renewable supply.

GCC Water Statistics

To put these figures in context, the UN defines absolute water scarcity as less than 500 m³ of renewable freshwater per capita per year. Every GCC state falls well below this threshold, with Qatar and the UAE among the most water-scarce nations on Earth in terms of natural endowment.

Desalination: Lifeline and Liability

The GCC's response to natural water scarcity has been, primarily, technological: desalination. The region accounts for approximately 45 per cent of global desalination capacity, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE operating the largest installed bases.

Desalination has been transformative. It has enabled urbanisation, industrialisation, and population growth that would be physically impossible with renewable water resources alone. But it comes with significant costs and risks:

Energy Intensity

Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO), the dominant modern technology, requires approximately 3–4 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per cubic metre of product water. Multi-stage flash (MSF) and multi-effect distillation (MED) — thermal processes still widely used in the GCC due to co-generation with power plants — consume 15–25 kWh-equivalent per cubic metre. Given that GCC electricity is predominantly generated from natural gas, desalination is a significant source of GHG emissions.

A rough calculation: Qatar produces approximately 500 million cubic metres of desalinated water per year. At an average energy intensity of 5 kWh/m³ (blended SWRO and thermal), this represents approximately 2.5 TWh of electricity — and associated emissions of roughly 1.2 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, solely for water production.

Brine Discharge: The Environmental Cost

For every cubic metre of freshwater produced, desalination generates approximately 1.5 cubic metres of concentrated brine — a hypersaline discharge that typically contains residual treatment chemicals, including antiscalants, biocides, and coagulants. In the Persian Gulf, where water exchange with the open ocean is limited (the Gulf's mean depth is only 36 metres, with a single outlet through the Strait of Hormuz), brine accumulation is a genuine ecological concern.

Studies have documented elevated salinity in the vicinity of desalination outfalls, with localised impacts on seagrass, coral, and benthic communities. The cumulative effect of multiple desalination plants discharging into a semi-enclosed water body is a growing concern — one that EIA practice in the region must address more rigorously.

Supply Chain Vulnerability

Near-total dependence on desalination creates a single-point-of-failure risk. Desalination plants require continuous electricity supply, chemical inputs, and functioning intake/outfall infrastructure. Any disruption — from grid failure, supply chain interruption, or harmful algal bloom blocking intakes — directly affects potable water supply. Most GCC states maintain strategic water reserves, but these typically cover only 2–7 days of consumption.

Aquifer Depletion: The Silent Crisis

While desalination dominates the policy discussion, the depletion of fossil groundwater aquifers is an equally serious — and less reversible — crisis. Saudi Arabia's experience is instructive: the country's wheat self-sufficiency programme, launched in the 1980s, drew heavily on the Saq and Tabuk aquifer systems. By 2008, when the programme was phased out, groundwater levels had declined by tens of metres and several aquifer compartments were effectively exhausted.

Qatar's groundwater situation is similarly precarious. The country's two main aquifer systems — the Rus and Umm er Radhuma — have experienced decades of overdraft for agricultural and landscaping use. Water quality has deteriorated as drawdown has induced lateral intrusion of more saline water. Once a fossil aquifer is depleted or salinised, it does not recover on any human timescale — the water accumulated over thousands of years under different climatic conditions.

Treated Sewage Effluent: The Underused Resource

Treated sewage effluent (TSE) represents a significant and underexploited water resource in the GCC. Qatar's Doha South sewage treatment plant produces high-quality TSE (tertiary treatment with UV disinfection) that is suitable for irrigation, industrial cooling, and district cooling makeup water.

However, TSE utilisation rates in the GCC remain below potential:

• Qatar: TSE reuse has increased substantially, particularly for irrigation of public green spaces, but significant volumes are still discharged to sea.
• UAE: Abu Dhabi targets 100 per cent reuse of treated wastewater, but actual utilisation rates vary by emirate.
• Saudi Arabia: The National Water Strategy targets 70 per cent wastewater reuse by 2030, up from approximately 15 per cent currently.

Barriers to higher TSE reuse include: public perception concerns (even for non-potable uses), infrastructure gaps (separate distribution networks for TSE are expensive to retrofit), quality consistency, and regulatory frameworks that do not always incentivise reuse over desalination.

Why 2023 Is a Turning Point

Several converging developments make 2023 a pivotal year for regional water policy:

1. UN Water Conference 2023

The United Nations 2023 Water Conference (March 2023, New York) was the first UN conference dedicated to water in nearly 50 years. It produced a Water Action Agenda with hundreds of voluntary commitments from governments, businesses, and civil society. While non-binding, the conference elevated water security on the global agenda and catalysed commitments from MENA governments.

2. National Water Strategies

Several GCC states have published or updated national water strategies in 2022–2023:

• Qatar: The Qatar National Water Security Mega-Reservoirs Programme — a massive infrastructure project to increase strategic water storage capacity — continues to advance.
• Saudi Arabia: The National Water Strategy 2030 sets targets for consumption reduction, TSE reuse, and aquifer management.
• UAE: The Water Security Strategy 2036 targets a 21 per cent reduction in total demand for water resources.

3. Climate Change Acceleration

IPCC AR6 projections show precipitation decline across the Arabian Peninsula under all warming scenarios. The already minimal rainfall that recharges aquifers will decrease further, while evapotranspiration will increase with rising temperatures. Climate change is not causing the water crisis — overdraft and demand growth are — but it is accelerating it and reducing the margin for error.

4. ESG Disclosure Pressure

Water is increasingly prominent in ESG disclosure frameworks. CDP's water security questionnaire, ISSB's sustainability disclosure standards, and GRI's water-related indicators all require companies to disclose water consumption, discharge quality, and exposure to water-stressed basins. For GCC companies in water-intensive sectors (petrochemicals, cement, food and beverage, hospitality), water disclosure will become a material reporting obligation.

EIA Requirements for Water Impact Assessment

Environmental Impact Assessments in the GCC must increasingly address water impacts comprehensively. Key requirements include:

Water Balance Assessment

Quantifying the project's water demand by source (desalinated, groundwater, TSE, trucked), comparing demand against available supply, and assessing the cumulative impact of the project's water withdrawal on shared resources.

Wastewater and Brine Discharge Modelling

For projects that generate wastewater or brine, hydrodynamic modelling of discharge plumes is essential — particularly in the shallow, poorly flushed waters of the Persian Gulf. Near-field and far-field modelling should assess salinity, temperature, and chemical constituent dispersion against ambient water quality objectives.

Groundwater Impact Assessment

Projects involving dewatering, excavation, or groundwater abstraction must assess impacts on the local aquifer system, including drawdown, quality changes, and effects on nearby users. In Qatar's karst limestone geology, groundwater pathways can be complex and difficult to predict without detailed hydrogeological investigation.

Climate Change Adjustment

Water supply assessments should incorporate climate change projections — not just current conditions. A project designed today with a 30-year operational life must account for the water supply conditions of 2053, not 2023.

Practical Recommendations

For Policymakers

• Set binding targets for TSE reuse rates, with financial incentives for reuse over desalination for non-potable applications.
• Implement volumetric water pricing that reflects the true cost of production and environmental externalities.
• Require Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) plans for all major developments.
• Expand strategic water reserves from days to weeks of consumption.

For Companies

• Conduct water risk assessments using tools such as WRI Aqueduct or WWF Water Risk Filter to understand site-specific exposure.
• Set context-based water targets that align consumption with locally sustainable levels, not just efficiency improvements.
• Invest in water recycling and zero-liquid-discharge technologies where feasible.
• Disclose water performance through CDP and aligned frameworks, with independent verification of reported data.

For Environmental Practitioners

• Strengthen water impact assessment in EIA practice, moving beyond water balance checklists to comprehensive hydrological and hydrogeological analysis.
• Incorporate brine discharge modelling as a standard requirement for projects involving desalination or high-salinity wastewater.
• Apply cumulative impact assessment to water resources, recognising that individual projects may have acceptable impacts in isolation but collectively exceed sustainable extraction limits.

Conclusion

Water stress in the Middle East is not a future threat — it is a present reality that technology has masked but not solved. Desalination has bought time, but it has also created energy dependencies, environmental impacts, and supply chain vulnerabilities that must be addressed.

The convergence of policy momentum, climate urgency, and ESG disclosure pressure in 2023 creates an opportunity to shift from reactive supply augmentation to proactive demand management and resource efficiency. For a region where every drop of freshwater is either manufactured or borrowed from a declining aquifer, this shift is not optional — it is the definition of sustainability.

GSustain supports clients across the GCC with water impact assessment, brine discharge modelling, and environmental management advisory that addresses water as the strategic resource it is — not an afterthought in the environmental assessment process, but a central pillar of sustainable development in the region.