This set of eleven essays addresses the tightening water resource problems of the Arab region's twenty countries. The authors discuss themes of water conflict and provide detailed looks at four sub-areas: the Maghreb, the Nile countries, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Mashrek.
This century has seen a technological drive to enlarge traditional surface and groundwater supplies and to expand irrigated farming for rapidly growing and progressively more prosperous populations. But now the region is facing absolute limits on its fresh water. "Water in the Arab World" focuses on today's need to move toward rationalized new patterns of using water within the national economies, a transition often described as moving from supply to demand management. The change calls for intensified national legislative and planning efforts concerning water, with serious consideration of desalination and conservation, as well as of pricing and market approaches to the allocation of a very constrained supply.
Preface
Units of Measurement
Summary
1. The Water Problems of the Arab World: Management of Scarce Resources Abdul-Karim Sadik and Shawki Barghouti
2. Transboundary Water and the Challenge of International Cooperation in the Middle East John Waterbury
3. Overall Perspectives on Countries and Regions J. A. Allan
4. The Central Region: Problems and Perspectives J. A. Allan
5. The Arab Mashrek: Hydrologic History, Problems and Perspectives Yahia Bakour and John Kolars
6. Water Resource Development in the Maghreb Countries Mohammed Jellali and Ali Jebali
7. Water in the Arabian Peninsula: Problems and Perspectives Jamil Al Alawi and Mohammed Abdulrazzak
8. Desalination, an Emergent Option Taysir Dabbagh, Peter Sadler, Abdulaziz Al-Saqabi, and Mohamed Sadeqi
9. Global Climate Change and Its Consequences for Water Availability in the Arab World F. A. Bazzaz
10. Conflict and Water Use in the Middle East Thomas Naff
11. The Agenda for the Next Thirty Years Peter Rogers
Biographical Notes
References
Index
Peter Rogers is Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Engineering and Professor of City Planning at Harvard University.