Exploitation of Fossil Aquifers and Future Water Supplies in the Middle East

The Middle East and North Africa region is overusing its fossil, non-renewable groundwater resources in a way, which can be described as ruinous exploitation to the stored quantities of water and their qualities.Irrigated agriculture developed on these resources is feeding on the resources base of the MENA nations and their future generations, by exhausting the non-renewable resources for private gains.It seems that, the concept of intergeneration equity in the field of fossil groundwater resources and the concept of environmental services of water have not yet entered the vocabulary of water planers and decision-makers in the MENA region.If the over exploitation policies of fossil and non-renewable groundwater resources in the MENA region continue along the same line, that region will soon be suffering of one of its most severe socio-economic, environmental and intergeneration equity problems.