Reallocation of Water Resources in the Arab Region

Abstract

Water is an integral part of ecosystems. Water is essential to earth's living creatures and central to maintaining the earth's ecosystems. In most of the world, both water quantity and quality problems are becoming more acute, since the available water resources are being over-utilized and stressed beyond the sustainability point. The contemporary global water crises including inefficient use and lack of equitable distribution are mainly due to the crises of governance. Water governance emerged as a comprehensive framework by replacing all the existing paradigms including integrated water resource management. Though water governance focuses many aspects in ensuring sustainable use of water resources and its equitable distribution, reallocation of water resources may be the most appropriate policy option to achieve these objectives. Reallocation will systematically address the uneven distribution of water resources across the sectors and prevent excessive allocation of water to a particular sector. Based on secondary sources, this chapter analyzes the challenges involved in water governance in terms of water reallocation in the Arab countries where the allocation of water for agriculture is very high. Addressing water scarcity in the Arab region lies mainly in effectively managing the growing demand. Major water governance challenges with respect reallocation of water resources are tariff, metering, and billing, which led to the excessive use in an unprecedented manner.