The Arabian peninsula, home to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, among other nations, consists mostly of arid desert and contains no permanent rivers of note. Agriculture on the peninsula has always been a struggle, and it has been getting worse in recent decades. The continued desertification of the peninsula, due to climate change and poor use of scarce water resources, poses a serious problem for the nations that lie on it. Efforts are underway to combat the desertification and reclaim the land for future generations.
Problems Posed by Desertification
The increasing desertification comes at a bad time for the region. The vast wealth that has flowed into the Gulf States from their massive oil reserves has led to an increase in population. In turn, this has strained the already minute water resources of the peninsular nations. Saudi Arabia, for example, has a daily per capita water use rate that is double that of the more water-rich European Union. With less water available, and a growing population, a serious water crisis is developing.
Traditionally, many groups in the Middle East and North Africa were nomadic, and their travels often followed the patterns of rainfall. As they moved from area to area to farm and allow cattle to graze, the land had an opportunity to replenish itself. The rise of modern civilization, with its emphasis on urbanization, meant that many of these nomads wound up congregating next to built-up areas. This has resulted in the same land being used continuously, and without the chance for replenishment, it is seeing an increase in desertification.
Conflict within the Middle East, combined with poor government policies and neglect, has further eroded the amount of arable land. Iraq was once a source of food for the region, but the cumulative effect of multiple wars and a corrupt and incompetent regime has destroyed its agricultural base. Now, Iraq is forced to import food rather than export it. Syria has been gripped by an ongoing civil war for years, destroying its infrastructure and forcing thousands to flee to refugee camps in neighboring nations, which then struggle to feed them. A conflict in Yemen continues to disrupt that nation as well.
Some Innovative Solutions to the Crisis
Fortunately, the oil wealth of the Gulf States has provided the means to find solutions to the problem of desertification. Massive tree-planting efforts are underway in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but these measures will take some time to have an effect. An interesting approach to the problem has been the attempt to map and understand the Mega Aquifer System (MAS), a huge network of underground water deposits that runs the length of the Arabian peninsula. The MAS is a potential source of water for the entire region, but the extreme lack of rainfall across the peninsula means that the MAS is not able to replenish its groundwater deposits quickly.
Efforts are now underway to map and study the MAS. By finding out the age of the available water, scientists can ascertain where the water came from and how long it takes to build up. One of the key findings so far is that the groundwater levels have seen a significant decrease over the last couple of decades. This has been attributed to the overuse of groundwater for irrigation in the Central Arabian Peninsula, the area with the least rainfall. Before the available groundwater can be used in any significant quantities, it will have to reach a sustainable level. Officials hope that a transfer of the use of groundwater to the more mountainous southern part of the peninsula will result in a more sustainable model due to the larger rainfall totals there.
In the United Arab Emirates, scientists are using “nanoclay,” a technique for introducing clay into the soil to enable it to hold more water and make it more useful for farming. The idea of adding clay to soil is ancient, going back thousands of years. However, it has almost always been expensive, and finding the right amount of clay to add has always been difficult. Recently, the advancement of technology has at least begun to overcome these difficulties. By mass producing the nanoclay, officials estimate that water usage could be reduced by as much as 50 percent.
The continued desertification of the Arabian peninsula is an ongoing concern for all the nations in the region. The Russia-Ukraine war highlighted the dangers of relying on nations outside the Middle East for food supplies. New technologies have shown promise in reducing water usage and creating sustainability. Further investment in these emerging technologies may well be the key to ending the water crisis plaguing the Middle East.