Arab states urged to be open on water scarcity

People in the Arab world need fuller and freer information about shrinking water supplies but their governments are withholding it for fear of fuelling unrest, a United Nations expert said on Thursday. Arable land makes up just 4.2 percent of the Middle East and North Africa and is expected to shrink due to climate change - a potential source of political instability, analysts say, in a region where economic privation has sometimes sparked conflict.
"Arab countries do not disclose enough information on their water out of concern that transparency could fuel unnecessary public concern and unrest," said Hosny Khordagui, Regional Program Director of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) Water Governance Programme for Arab States. Disclosing figures on water scarcity might be perceived as reflecting bad management on the part of Arab states and so is generally avoided, he told a UNDP round-table on Arab environmental issues.
"If we have public participation, we would have better management, participation and more justice," Khordagui said, adding that ministers were accountable to those who appointed them and not to the public. "Don't expect accountability without real democracy and free elections," he said. People in the Middle East and North Africa have access to an average of just 1,000 cubic metres of water a year, seven times lower than the world-wide rate, according to the UNDP's Arab Human Development Report.
As climate change takes its toll and the region's populations grow at nearly twice the global average, that figure is projected to shrink to just 460 cubic metres by 2025. Co-ordinated water policy will be a challenge in a region where water politics is often seen as a zero-sum game and can be used as a lever in larger political feuds.
DISPLACED POPULATION "If we lose one more drop of water and our capacity to give Arab citizens their right to food, this is a political issue par excellence," said Ismail Serageldin, a former World Bank environmental expert. In one example, a temperature rise of 1-1.5 degrees in one area of Sudan in 2030-2060 would slash maize production by 70 percent, the UNDP report said. Such scenarios could be repeated elsewhere in the region.