SUITMA 2005 Cairo - Near East land and water resources: potentials and risks
SUITMA 2005 Cairo
| This abstract is about one of the papers of the Desertification and urban expansion theme of the SUITMA 2005 symposium. |
| Ghassan Hamdallah.i |
The Near East Region extends over a large land area, from the Atlantic on the west to the Central Asian States on the east. Although its 32 Member Countries sweep about 10% of the World’s land area, and having more than 10% of its population; these countries hardly enjoy 2.2% of the global Internal Renewable Water Resources (IRWR). In this Region, some 70% of its lands are arid or semi-arid, with a lot of marginal lands and poor forest cover areas.
In addition to the limited natural resource base in the Region (arable land per caput is 0.2 ha and the average fresh water share is 1500m3 per caput per year); a wide disparity exists from one country to the other. For example the renewable water share ranges from over 10,000 m3 in some CIS States to lower than 120 m3 in others like Jordan. In addition, about 60% of the good arable lands exist in only 4 countries of the Region: Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Turkey.
The Region is often face the vagaries of erratic rainfall, land degradation at accelerated scales, recurrent episodes of Drought, the last of which hit during 1999/2001was devastating in some countries entailing heavy agricultural and economic negative impacts. Tough competition exists for accessibility to the limited resource base, of good lands and fresh water, due to the fast-growing population growth rate, improved living standards, fast creeping desertification fronts (due to urbanization, droughts, salinization and wind/water erosions). Several economic sectors compete for the resources, including Agriculture (as a major user); Urban; Industry and Tourism. This situation warrants some serious governmental policies towards enacting strict utilization and management of the countries natural resources in a sustainable manner, protecting all communities and their environment.
