2012 | OriginalPaper | Chapter
Groundwater and Qanats in Syria: Leadership, Ownership, and Abandonment
Author : Joshka Wessels
Published in: Water, Cultural Diversity, and Global Environmental Change
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
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Groundwater management is among the most important challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (World Bank 2000). It is the world’s most arid, with 1% of the global renewable fresh water available to its population. By the 1990s, eight countries in the Middle East (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Yemen, and Israel) had crossed the red line of ‘absolute water scarcity’ (Engelman and LeRoy 1993; Swain 1998). The population of nearly 300 million has doubled in the last three decades and is expected to double again by 2025 (Blanche 2001). This increase will mean a massive pressure on the already scarce water resources, yet newer technologies – especially groundwater pumping devices – cannot for long keep pace with rising water demand, as they are already operating at unsustainable rates. Instead, these technologies may further deplete currently viable aquifers and preclude their use even for lower-impact sustainable traditional irrigation systems, such as qanats (Lightfoot 1996).