ABSTRACT
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is acknowledged as having the largest
water deficit in the world (Gleick, 2000; World Bank, Mohamed, & Kremer, 2009). Per
capita freshwater availability decreased from 4000m
/y in 1950 to 1100m
/y in 2007
(World Bank, 2007). The region is wide and heterogeneous and it includes both rentier and
non-rentier economies, with different socio-economic adaptive capacities and environ-
mental frameworks that determine to a large extent the water policy and management.
Absolute and per capita blue water resources in the Middle East are the lowest in the world
(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2003). Renewable water
resource withdrawal in the region already exceeds the critical thresholds of 20% and 40%of
total renewable water resources, and water tables are falling as farmers and cities abstract
water faster than the rate of replenishment from recharge and aquifer leakage (Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2011). Since the 1970s, the water demands
of its political economies have exceeded the capacity of the local resources for food self-
sufficiency (Allan, 1997). In MENA there is “virtually no more freshwater to develop”
(Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2000, p. 50).
