Water demand management in the Middle East and North Africa

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -To provide an overview of current trends and developments in water demand management (WDM) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Design/methodology/approach -A survey was conducted based on a questionnaire, approaching members of the German Technical Cooperation network in the Mediterranean and the EMWIS internet platform. Survey results were compiled, analysed, and compared, tabular data was compiled and visualised. Findings -Paper summarises main trends and issues related to water consumption, water pricing, water awareness, and water efficiency in the MENA, and derives changes compared to an earlier study. WDM efforts now focus more on drinking water supply than irrigation, the breadth of efforts has increased in the recent past. Research limitations/implications -No information for Israel and Lebanon could be provided. It is recommended to repeat this kind of research in, i.e. five year intervals to be able to track the further development of WDM in this water scarce region. Practical implications -Very useful primer for WDM in the region, summarising current trends, facts and figures. Deduces fields of action for policy makers, development agencies and NGOs active in WDM in the region. Originality/value -Most recent overview on the topic available. Provides benchmarks for decision makers in the countries covered, encourages regional dialogue on best practices in WDM.

Potentials and limits of urban rainwater harvesting in the Middle East

“…10). They provided up to 162 m 3 of water and hence may have saved up to 100 C considering a local water price of 0.62 C m −3 (Magiera et al, 2006).…”

“…10. Number of persons and amount of RWH supplied for 79 households with active cisterns in Ramallah; lines illustrate required drinking water assuming a per capita water consumption of 85 l day −1 (Magiera et al, 2006). regional estimates of Abdulla and Al-Shareef (2009), who arrived at 15.5 × 10 6 m 3 for entire Jordan.…”

“…To simulate continuous cistern use, a constant value of daily water consumption was subtracted from the accumulated rooftop runoff obtained by the model. For this purpose, literature values of average per capita water consumption (Magiera et al, 2006) were multiplied by the number of persons living in the individual households. The rainfall station with the largest rainfall volume (554 mm) was used as model input since it represented long term average rainfall.…”

“…Six cisterns plotted far above the rest and had small efficiency. Assuming a per capita water consumption of 85 l day −1 (Magiera et al, 2006), overflow occurred in 39 cisterns. Twelve of them had efficiencies larger than 2 indicating that they are filled more than two times during an average rainfall year.…”

Dealing with Closed Basins: The Case of the Lower Jordan River Basin

“…The publication of Jordan's water strategy and policies in 1997 (THKJ & MWI, 1997), the creation in 1992 of the Ministry of Water and Irrigation responsible for the management of the entire water sector, the publication of several World Bank reports (World Bank, 2001aBank, , 2001b, the official issuance of a national water master plan (THKJ, 2004), all called for implementing effective demand management options (notably through a reduction of the agricultural water consumption and a better management of urban water supplies) that would displace traditional supply augmentation options (Al-Jayyousi, 2000). This orientation was forcefully endorsed by bilateral cooperation partners such as GTZ (Magiera et al, 2006), USAID and CIDA/IDRC (http://www.idrc.ca/waterdemand/). Actions taken to manage the actual demand included:…”