The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) issued a frightening report last week about the current water crisis in the Arab world, and its implications in the not so distant future. I said the report was frightening on the assumption that Arabs are concerned about the future of their children. According to the report, the water quota per citizen in 12 Arab countries will in future be far below the level of “acute scarcity”. The report expected the population of Arab countries, estimated to currently be about 360 million, to increase to 634 million by 2050. It said the current gap between the water supply and demand, which is about 43 cubic kilometers, might go up to 127 cubic km by 2030. The report said that although scarcity is the main cause of the water crisis in the Arab world, the problem has been further augmented by water mismanagement by both people and their governments. This report which is informing us about the death of our children from thirst was preceded by warning signals from King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST). During the opening ceremony of the university in 2009, a number of its officials said that no Saudi university had until then made any studies about the water crisis. They said that they could not find a single piece of research about this looming crisis in any of the Saudi universities. We are looking at a crisis which is expected to hit us right in the face by the year 2030. This, however, means that we still have enough time to deal with it and prevent it from happening. The first step towards this solution is to curb the excessive population growth which will result in fighting over water in less than 20 years. More important than this is making a serious effort to inculcate the value of life in the minds of our people making them understand that life is precious and, therefore, should be maintained for the future generations. This is not something to be done by columnists alone, but should be done by an educational system that will make our children understand that it is their responsibility to preserve life, especially by preserving the available quantities of water.
