For the Middle East, water has always been a politically sensitive issue, linked as it is to production of food. Brian Whitaker looks at how the region allocates this precious commodity.

The Guardian, 25 July, 2001

THE RIVER Jordan, in the words of the old gospel song, is deep and wide with milk and honey on the other side...hallelujah! But no matter how deep and wide it may have been in biblical times, today the river is not much more than a trickle.

This summer, another river in Jordan - the Yarmuk - is so low that for the third year in succession water is being pumped from Syria. Nearby, Lake Galilee is drying up so fast that some Israelis are talking of chopping down fruit trees to save it. 

None of this surprises Tony Allan, professor of geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. The Middle East, he says, has had a water shortfall since the 1970s.

"Two parts of the world that are really dry and have many countries in them are the Middle East and southern Africa. But in terms of water resources and population the Middle East is much worse off than southern Africa." The Middle East (including North Africa) has 300m people and an annual water supply of 200bn cubic metres.

On average, one million people require a billion cubic metres of water a year, which means that the Middle East can meet only two-thirds of its needs. These alarming figures make the situation look better than it actually is, says Allan, because comparisons with wetter regions ignore moisture - or lack of it - in the soil.

"In the UK we only count the rivers and groundwater, which doesn't have to supply the agriculture. About 80-90% of UK water is in the soil," Allan says. The Middle East, on the other hand, has little soil water.

"Egypt, with a similar population to the UK, has 55bn cubic metres from the Nile - and that's all. It's all engineered water and it gets counted," says Allan.

This raises some intriguing questions. If the Middle East has been so massively short of water for years, how has it survived? And why have governments in the region not pressed the panic button? The answer, Allan suggests in a new book, lies in "virtual water" - a term that his team at SOAS claim to have invented.

Most of the water that we use does not go on drinking, washing or flushing the lavatory. It is imbedded in foods which may even appear perfectly dry - such as flour. We each drink about one cubic metre of water a year and use between 50 and 100 for domestic purposes. But it takes a further 1,000 cubic metres a year to meet each person's food needs.

"At the national level, over 90% of all water budgets are devoted to the agricultural sector," Allan says. So, although it may help to take a bath less often, that is a drop in the ocean compared with the use of water by farmers.

Some years ago, Israeli economists looked at the export trade in oranges and found that customers were paying 10-20% of the real cost of the water used to grow them. In effect, Israel was giving away much-needed water.

Exploring this idea further, the SOAS team looked at other crops in terms of their "virtual water" content. Growing a tonne of wheat, for instance, takes about 1,000 cubic metres of water. A country which imports wheat, rather than growing it locally, therefore saves 1,000 cubic metres of water for every tonne it imports. This, almost without being noticed, is how the Middle East has survived. Its "virtual water" imports, in the form of grain during the mid-1990s, were equivalent to the flow of the river Nile into Egypt.

Water, for everyone in the Middle East, is a highly sensitive issue - not least because it is so closely related to the food supply. As a result, Allan says, politics gets in the way of devis ing economically and environmentally logical policies. "No politician will dare admit that his country is short of water and therefore short of food. If he did, people would say that he was not competent.

"Importing virtual water reduces anxiety about water. Ministers can stand up and say, 'we are not short of water' because the water coming in is both invisible and silent."

Logically, says Allan, the first priority is to bring the issue into the open and secure supplies of virtual water - since there is no other way to make up the deficit - through international food agreements. 

The second priority is to manage the demand for water and re-allocate it to the most profitable uses. The third priority is to use it more efficiently by improving irrigation, reducing waste, and so on. But in terms of political feasibility, these priorities are reversed in the Middle East.

The idea that the region will have to meet its water shortage by import ing vast and growing quantities of food - for ever - creates feelings of deep insecurity, linked as it is to many people's livelihoods. In Saudi Arabia, for example, at enormous expense they started to grow wheat and even exported some.

But re-allocating water resources can bring huge benefits says Allan, citing the example of his own college, SOAS, which stands on a hectare of land. As a field of wheat, the land would use 10,000 cubic metres of water per year, generate revenue of $3,000-$4,000 and provide half a job. As a university college, it uses the same amount of water, turns over $50 million a year, provides 1,000 jobs and educates 3,500 students. This helps to explain why many Middle Eastern governments are so enthusiastic about information technology: you can write software in the desert, and it takes less water than growing a row of beans.

Reallocating water to more profitable uses also involves social change as people move to different types of jobs - arousing controversies that the politicians would rather avoid. In Egypt, farmers are an important political force. "Allocating water efficiently has a high political cost," Allan says. "People don't want to move water out of agriculture."

The only country in the region that has opened up debate on these issues and done something about them is Israel. In 1956, agriculture accounted for 20% of Israel's GDP; today it is only 2%. "The Israelis took 30 years to move from a small awareness that allocation efficiency is a good idea to putting it into practice," says Allan.

In the face of competing claims on scarce resources, the allocation process can also become highly political. The mayors of Tel Aviv and Haifa were last week battling with the water authorities to save their cities' public gardens. Mayor Ron Huldai of Tel Aviv said he would not allow the few green areas available to city residents to dry up. 

Instead, the city dwellers want Israel to stop growing avoca does, which need large amounts of water, and to cut down banana groves near Lake Galilee. These local difficulties fade into insignificance alongside the bigger picture. What the Middle East needs is a think tank to look at global food and its significance with respect to water, Allan believes.

"What happens in China is more important than what Middle East politicians can do at home," he says. "The Chinese have increased their cereal production four or five times since 1961, which, despite the rising demand for cereals for food and for animal fodder has taken them off the world market for virtual water in most years."

But a lot also depends on Chinese population policy. The success or failure of Chinese birth control programmes alone could make the difference between salvation and ruin for the people of Cairo, Damascus and Tel Aviv. China should achieve a population 'saving' of about 300m people by 2020 - which, as it happens, is equal to the entire population of the Middle East.