Middle East faces water shortage with increased reliance on desalination plants

This week, a UAE minister brought attention to the water shortage problem by declaring that the country must recycle all of its water. Minister of Energy and Infrastructure Suhail Al Mazrouei deemed this necessary due to the country's dry environment and scant precipitation. The United Arab Emirates and its neighbors are increasingly reliant on desalination, with nearly half of the world's daily output of 95 million cubic meters coming from the Middle East and North Africa. Worldwide, desalination has become more popular since, according to some projections, there will be a 40% water shortage by 2030 if current trends continue. Other solutions, such as water recycling, would only be able to address around half of this gap, and desalination is necessary to fill in the gap, according to Dr. Muhammad Wakil Shahzad, a senior lecturer at Northumbria University in the UK who has created a patented desalination system. "There's no way that we can fulfil the water supply gap without desalination," he said. "The only feasible and practical solution is seawater desalination." Although desalination is easing the problems of water shortage, there are already more than 19 thousand desalination units worldwide that are extremely energy intensive. In most cases, the desalination units release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. BKM/ Expat Media
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