Water demand versus supply in Saudi Arabia: current and future challenges

Abstract

Saudi Arabia is facing a chronic water-shortage problem. Demand far exceeds the sustainable yield of both conventional and non-conventional water resources. The resulting demand -supply gap is being bridged through groundwater depletion. In this paper, demand -supply gaps for the coming 20 years are projected under three scenarios: optimistic, moderate and pessimistic. Future sustainable water yields are calculated and allocated to projected water demand in the domestic, industrial and agricultural sectors. The study shows that Saudi Arabia will not be able to bridge the demand -supply gap in the near future. Intensive water demand management measures are needed in all sectors to minimize future demand -supply gaps, especially focused on the largest water consumer: the agricultural sector.

A seawater desalination scheme for global hydrological models

“…WWR is the ratio of annual total water withdrawal of all sectors to the mean annual renewable water resources typically substituted by annual runoff. Both AI and threshold WWR were devised by Raskin et al (1997), and are widely accepted and used in quantitative macroscale water resource assessments (e.g., Vörösmarty et al, 2000;Oki et al, 2001). With these new conditions, SDM2 is able to identify the coastal regions with modest aridity and high water stress where actual major desalination plants are currently located.…”

Impacts of agricultural policy on irrigation water demand: a case study of Saudi Arabia

“…The 20% of renewable groundwater was allocated to the agricultural sector to cover irrigation deficit during the dry summer period, when surface water is limited. The increase of treated wastewater and surface water supply capacity was adapted from Ouda (2013a). Sustainable irrigation water supply capacity from groundwater, treated wastewater and surface water is shown in Figure 4.…”

“…The kingdom does not have any natural surface watercourses such as rivers or lakes. Average yearly rainfall is less than 100 mm, with occasional maximum rainfall of about 550 mm per year in the south-western region (Abderrahman, 2001(Abderrahman, , 2006Ouda, 2013a;World Bank, 2004, 2005. Population increased from about 7 million in 1970 to about 27 million in 2010, with an average annual growth of 3.4% (Central Department of Statistics & Information, 2010).…”

Crise de abastecimento de água em São Paulo e falta de planejamento estratégico

“…Kaldellis e Kondili (2007) relatam que o aumento da demanda para consumo humano e irrigação, redução das precipitações e aumento do uso de água subterrânea têm gerado escassez em determinadas regiões na Grécia, situação essa similar à verificada na RMSP, embora a população não tenha plena informação sobre isso (Ribeiro, 2011). Essa situação tem afetado de maneira indiscriminada os mais diversos países, como China Wang, 2010); Austrália (Tapsuwan et al, 2014); Arábia Saudita (Ouda, 2014); Espanha (Milano et al, 2013); Estados Unidos (Gelcer et al, 2013); Chile (Meza, 2013;Núñez et al, 2013); Taiwan (Tsai;Elsberry, 2013), além de outras áreas na Europa e América do Norte (Hejazi et al, 2014).…”